(deploying-with-k8s)=

# Deploying with Kubernetes

Using Kubernetes to deploy vLLM is a scalable and efficient way to serve machine learning models. This guide will walk you through the process of deploying vLLM with Kubernetes, including the necessary prerequisites, steps for deployment, and testing.

## Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure that you have the following:

- A running Kubernetes cluster
- NVIDIA Kubernetes Device Plugin (`k8s-device-plugin`): This can be found at `https://github.com/NVIDIA/k8s-device-plugin/`
- Available GPU resources in your cluster

## Deployment Steps

1. **Create a PVC , Secret and Deployment for vLLM**

PVC is used to store the model cache and it is optional, you can use hostPath or other storage options

```yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: mistral-7b
  namespace: default
spec:
  accessModes:
  - ReadWriteOnce
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 50Gi
  storageClassName: default
  volumeMode: Filesystem
```

Secret is optional and only required for accessing gated models, you can skip this step if you are not using gated models

```yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: hf-token-secret
  namespace: default
type: Opaque
data:
  token: "REPLACE_WITH_TOKEN"
```

Create a deployment file for vLLM to run the model server. The following example deploys the `Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.3` model:

```yaml
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: mistral-7b
  namespace: default
  labels:
    app: mistral-7b
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: mistral-7b
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: mistral-7b
    spec:
      volumes:
      - name: cache-volume
        persistentVolumeClaim:
          claimName: mistral-7b
      # vLLM needs to access the host's shared memory for tensor parallel inference.
      - name: shm
        emptyDir:
          medium: Memory
          sizeLimit: "2Gi"
      containers:
      - name: mistral-7b
        image: vllm/vllm-openai:latest
        command: ["/bin/sh", "-c"]
        args: [
          "vllm serve mistralai/Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.3 --trust-remote-code --enable-chunked-prefill --max_num_batched_tokens 1024"
        ]
        env:
        - name: HUGGING_FACE_HUB_TOKEN
          valueFrom:
            secretKeyRef:
              name: hf-token-secret
              key: token
        ports:
        - containerPort: 8000
        resources:
          limits:
            cpu: "10"
            memory: 20G
            nvidia.com/gpu: "1"
          requests:
            cpu: "2"
            memory: 6G
            nvidia.com/gpu: "1"
        volumeMounts:
        - mountPath: /root/.cache/huggingface
          name: cache-volume
        - name: shm
          mountPath: /dev/shm
        livenessProbe:
          httpGet:
            path: /health
            port: 8000
          initialDelaySeconds: 60
          periodSeconds: 10
        readinessProbe:
          httpGet:
            path: /health
            port: 8000
          initialDelaySeconds: 60
          periodSeconds: 5
```

2. **Create a Kubernetes Service for vLLM**

Next, create a Kubernetes Service file to expose the `mistral-7b` deployment:

```yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: mistral-7b
  namespace: default
spec:
  ports:
  - name: http-mistral-7b
    port: 80
    protocol: TCP
    targetPort: 8000
  # The label selector should match the deployment labels & it is useful for prefix caching feature
  selector:
    app: mistral-7b
  sessionAffinity: None
  type: ClusterIP
```

3. **Deploy and Test**

Apply the deployment and service configurations using `kubectl apply -f <filename>`:

```console
kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml
kubectl apply -f service.yaml
```

To test the deployment, run the following `curl` command:

```console
curl http://mistral-7b.default.svc.cluster.local/v1/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
        "model": "mistralai/Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.3",
        "prompt": "San Francisco is a",
        "max_tokens": 7,
        "temperature": 0
      }'
```

If the service is correctly deployed, you should receive a response from the vLLM model.

## Conclusion

Deploying vLLM with Kubernetes allows for efficient scaling and management of ML models leveraging GPU resources. By following the steps outlined above, you should be able to set up and test a vLLM deployment within your Kubernetes cluster. If you encounter any issues or have suggestions, please feel free to contribute to the documentation.