dstack

dstack is an open-source, streamlined alternative to Kubernetes and Slurm, specifically designed for AI workloads. It simplifies container orchestration to accelerate the development, training, and deployment of AI models.

Installation

To use dstack with Verda Cloud, you first need to configure dstack integration by providing access credentials.

1. Log in to your Verda Cloud account.

2. Navigate to the Keys page in the sidebar.

3. Find Cloud API credentials area and then click the + Create button

Then, configure the backend via ~/.dstack/server/config.yml:

projects:
  - name: main
    backends:
      - type: datacrunch
        creds:
          type: api_key
          client_id: xfaHBqYEsArqhKWX-e52x3HH7w8T
          client_secret: B5ZU5Qx9Nt8oGMlmMhNI3iglK8bjMhagTbylZy4WzncZe39995f7Vxh8

See the dstack documentation for more configuration options.

Once the backend is configured, install the dstack server. Follow their official guide at https://dstack.ai/docs/installation/ to install dstack locally.

$ pip install "dstack[datacrunch]" -U
$ dstack server


Applying ~/.dstack/server/config.yml...

The admin token is "bbae0f28-d3dd-4820-bf61-8f4bb40815da"
The server is running at http://127.0.0.1:3000/

Create a fleet

Before you can submit your first run, you have to create a fleet.

type: fleet
name: default

# Allow to provision of up to 2 instances
nodes: 0..2

# Deprovision instances above the minimum if they remain idle
idle_duration: 1h

resources:
  # Allow to provision up to 8 GPUs
  gpu: 0..8

Pass the fleet configuration to dstack apply:

$ dstack apply -f fleet.dstack.yml

Once the fleet is created, you can run dstack’s dev environments, tasks, and services.

Dev environments

A dev environment lets you provision an instance and access it using your desktop IDE (VS Code, Cursor, PyCharm, etc) or via SSH.

Example configuration:

type: dev-environment
name: vscode

# If `image` is not specified, dstack uses its default image
python: "3.12"
#image: dstackai/base:py3.13-0.7-cuda-12.1

ide: vscode

resources:
  gpu: B200:1..8

To run a dev environment, apply the configuration:

$ dstack apply -f .dstack.yml

Submit the run vscode? [y/n]: y

To open in VS Code Desktop, use this link:
  vscode://vscode-remote/ssh-remote+vscode/workflow

Open the link to access the dev environment from your desktop IDE.

Tasks

A task allows you to schedule a job or run a web app. Tasks can be distributed and support port forwarding.

Example training task configuration:

type: task
# The name is optional, if not specified, generated randomly
name: trl-sft    

python: 3.12

# Uncomment to use a custom Docker image
#image: huggingface/trl-latest-gpu

env:
  - MODEL=Qwen/Qwen2.5-0.5B
  - DATASET=stanfordnlp/imdb

commands:
  - uv pip install trl
  - | 
    trl sft \
      --model_name_or_path $MODEL --dataset_name $DATASET
      --num_processes $DSTACK_GPUS_PER_NODE

resources:
  # One to two  GPUs
  gpu: B200:1..2
  shm_size: 24GB

To run the task, apply the configuration:

$ dstack apply -f train.dstack.yml

Submit the run `trl-sft`? [y/n]: y

Services

A service allows you to deploy a model or any web app as a scalable and secure endpoint.

Example configuration:

type: service
name: deepseek-r1-nvidia

image: lmsysorg/sglang:latest
env:
  - MODEL_ID=deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-8B
commands:
    - python3 -m sglang.launch_server
      --model-path $MODEL_ID
      --port 8000
      --trust-remote-code

port: 8000
model: deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-8B

resources:
  gpu: 24GB

To deploy the model, apply the configuration:

$ dstack apply -f deepseek.dstack.yml

Submit the run `deepseek-r1-sglang`? [y/n]: y

Service is published at: 
  http://localhost:3000/proxy/services/main/deepseek-r1-sglang/
Model deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1 is published at:
  http://localhost:3000/proxy/models/main/

dstack can handle auto-scaling and authentication if the corresponding properties are set.

If deploying a model, once the service is up, you can access it via dstack’s UI in addition to the API endpoint.

Clusters

Managed support for Verda’s instant clusters is coming to dstack. Meanwhile, in case you’ve created clusters with Verda, you can access them via dstack by creating an SSH fleet and listing the IP addresses of each node in the cluster, along with SSH user and SSH private key for each host.

Example configuration:

type: fleet
name: my-datacrunch-cluster

ssh_config:
  user: ubuntu
  identity_file: ~/.ssh/datacrunch_cluster_id_rsa
  hosts:
    - hostname: 12.34.567.890
      blocks: auto
    - hostname: 12.34.567.891
      blocks: auto
    - hostname: 12.34.567.892
      blocks: auto
    - hostname: 12.34.567.893
      blocks: auto


# Set to `cluster` if the instances are interconnected
placement: cluster

To create the fleet, apply the configuration:

$ dstack apply -f my-datacrunch-fleet.dstack.yml

 FLEET                INSTANCE  RESOURCES      STATUS    CREATED 
 my-datacrunch-fleet  0         8xH100 (80GB)  0/8 busy  3 mins ago      
                      1         8xH100 (80GB)  0/8 busy  3 mins ago    
                      2         8xH100 (80GB)  0/8 busy  3 mins ago    
                      3         8xH100 (80GB)  0/8 busy  3 mins ago 

Once the fleet is created, you can use it for running dev environments, tasks, and services.

With clusters, it’s possible to run distributed tasks.

Example distributed training task configuration:

type: task
name: train-distrib

# The size of the cluster
nodes: 2

python: 3.12
env:
  - NCCL_DEBUG=INFO
commands:
  - git clone https://github.com/pytorch/examples.git pytorch-examples
  - cd pytorch-examples/distributed/ddp-tutorial-series
  - uv pip install -r requirements.txt
  - |
    torchrun \
      --nproc-per-node=$DSTACK_GPUS_PER_NODE \
      --node-rank=$DSTACK_NODE_RANK \
      --nnodes=$DSTACK_NODES_NUM \
      --master-addr=$DSTACK_MASTER_NODE_IP \
      --master-port=12345 \
      multinode.py 50 10

resources:
  gpu: 24GB:1..8
  # Uncomment if using multiple GPUs
  shm_size: 24GB

To run the task, apply the configuration:

$ dstack apply -f train.dstack.yml

Submit the run `train-distrib`? [y/n]: y

dstack automatically runs the container on each node while passing system environment variables, which you can use with torchrun, accelerate, or other distributed frameworks.

dstack’s Documentation

dstack supports a wide range of configurations, not only simplifying the development, training, and deployment of AI models but also optimizing cloud resource usage and reducing costs. Explore dstack’s official documentation for more details and configuration options.

• Overview

• Protips