Open Source MLOps with ZenML and OpenShift

Red Hat OpenShift makes sense in a lot of contexts. It's one of the most comprehensive solutions for developing and running Kubernetes applications and the frameworks that help build them. If you can think of it, you can likely develop and run it on OpenShift in some way, shape, or form.

Machine Learning Operations or MLOps is a term for operationalizing machine learning (ML) for DevOps and ML engineers. There are many solutions out there for making MLOps easier. For instance, Red Hat has OpenShift Data Science. However, we encourage those in the community who have other innovative ways of doing things to bring those solutions to OpenShift as well. It's designed from the ground up to facilitate that.

This article looks at ZenML. As described on the project page, it is:

an extensible, open-source MLOps framework for creating portable, production-ready machine learning pipelines. By decoupling infrastructure from code, ZenML enables developers across your organization to collaborate more effectively as they develop to production.

It's a perfect candidate to run in the OpenShift ecosystem.

This exercise uses the OpenShift command line utility oc to deploy the ZenML Server via a Docker build strategy to build a zenml-server image. This way, as the ZenML open source project continues to evolve, you'll be able to grow with it and hopefully contribute to the project in a meaningful way as you learn more about it.

Get started

This exercise assumes that you have an existing OpenShift cluster and are logged in via the command line using oc. If you need help getting started with OpenShift, please visit Red Hat OpenShift Getting Started. Once you've got an environment up and running, move on to step 1 below.

Create a new project:

oc new-project zenml

Create a new application:

oc new-app --strategy=docker --binary --name=zenml

Open up your favorite editor and create a Dockerfile with the following contents:

ARG PYTHON_VERSION=3.9
FROM python:${PYTHON_VERSION}-slim AS base

ENV PYTHONFAULTHANDLER=1 \
    PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1 \
    PYTHONHASHSEED=random \
    PIP_NO_CACHE_DIR=1 \
    PIP_DISABLE_PIP_VERSION_CHECK=1 \
    ZENML_CONTAINER=1

ARG ZENML_VERSION

# install the given zenml version (default to latest)
RUN pip install zenml${ZENML_VERSION:+==$ZENML_VERSION}

FROM base AS server

RUN pip install zenml${ZENML_VERSION:+==$ZENML_VERSION}[server,secrets-aws,secrets-gcp,secrets-azure,secrets-hashicorp,s3fs,gcsfs,adlfs,connectors-aws,connectors-gcp,connectors-azure]

WORKDIR /zenml

ENV ZENML_CONFIG_PATH=/zenml/.zenconfig \
    ZENML_DEBUG=false \
    ZENML_ANALYTICS_OPT_IN=true

ARG USERNAME=zenml
ARG USER_UID=1001
ARG USER_GID=$USER_UID

# Create the user
RUN groupadd --gid $USER_GID $USERNAME \
    && useradd --uid $USER_UID --gid $USER_GID -m $USERNAME

RUN mkdir -p /zenml/.zenconfig/local_stores/default_zen_store && \
chgrp -R 0 /zenml && \
chmod -R g=u /zenml

ENV PATH="$PATH:/home/$USERNAME/.local/bin"

ENTRYPOINT ["uvicorn", "zenml.zen_server.zen_server_api:app", "--log-level", "debug"]
CMD ["--proxy-headers", "--port", "8080", "--host", "0.0.0.0"]

Now use that Dockerfile to build an image and deploy it to a pod in OpenShift:

oc start-build zenml --from-dir <path to Dockerfile>

Wait for the build to complete. You can check it by executing the following command:

oc logs build/zenml-1 -f

You can now create the service and associated routes to access the ZenML Server.

First, create a service:

oc expose deployment/zenml --port 8080

Next, create a route to access the ZenML Server:

oc create route edge zenml --service=zenml --insecure-policy='Allow'

Now you can run the following command to see what you've created:

oc get svc,route

You should see something similar to this:

NAME           TYPE       CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)   AGE
service/zenml  ClusterIP  172.30.38.137   <none>        8080/TCP  26s

NAME                              HOST/PORT                            PATH   SERVICES   PORT     TERMINATION   WILDCARD
route.route.openshift.io/zenml    zenml-zenml.apps.cluster.example.com        zenml      <all>    edge/Allow    None

At this point, you can now access the ZenML Server Web UI via the OpenShift route you created in the previous step in the browser of your choice. For instance, I would use the following in my address bar:

http://zenml-zenml.apps.cluster.example.com

Once the login comes up, log in with Username "default" and leave the password blank. Then press the Log In button.

After providing your e-mail for ZenML (or not), move on to the next page, and you should see a dashboard similar to this:

Simple

Congratulations! Now you have ZenML Server running on OpenShift. You can explore the ZenML open source project and all its possibilities on GitHub. Good luck. Have fun!

Want more?

Please let us know if you'd like to see more MLOps with OpenShift in the future. In the meantime, watch a couple of Red Hatters talk about MLOps over coffee:

OpenShift Coffee Break: MLOps with OpenShift

And if you're interested in getting some hands-on with Red Hat Open Data Science, check out this OpenShift Developer Sandbox activity:

How to create a natural language processing (NLP) application using OpenShift Data Science

You can also visit the upstream Open Data Hub to get more involved in the open source AI on Hybrid Cloud action.