AWS Sagemaker Inference Endpoints in Friendli Container—AI Acceleration on Ease

This blog post will guide you through creating an Amazon SageMaker Model from model artifacts stored in an S3 bucket and leveraging Friendli ECR container images. We'll then configure and deploy this model as a SageMaker Endpoint for real-time inference. You could then use this Endpoint to invoke your models and receive generative AI inference responses.

By utilizing Friendli Containers in your SageMaker pipeline, you'll benefit from the Friendli Inference's speed and resource efficiency. We'll explore how to create inference endpoints using both the AWS Console and the boto3 Python SDK.

The General Workflow

1. Create a Model: Within SageMaker Inference, define a new model by specifying the model artifacts in your S3 bucket and the Friendli container image from ECR.
2. Configure the Endpoint: Create a SageMaker Inference endpoint configuration by selecting the instance type and the number of instances required.
3. Create the Endpoint: Utilize the configured settings to launch a SageMaker Inference endpoint.
4. Invoke the Endpoint: Once deployed, send requests to your endpoint to receive inference responses.

Prerequisite

Before beginning, you need to push the Friendli Container image to an ECR repository on AWS. First, prepare the Friendli Container image by following the instructions in "Pulling Friendli Container Image." Then, tag and push the image to the Amazon ECR repository as guided in "Pushing a Docker image to an Amazon ECR private repository."

Using the AWS Console

Let's delve into the step-by-step instructions for creating an inference endpoint using the AWS Console.

Step 1: Creating a Model

1. You can start creating model by clicking on the “Create model” button under SageMaker > Inference > Models

2. Configure the model

1. Model settings:

   1. Model name: A model name.

   2. IAM role: An IAM role that includes the AmazonSageMakerFullAccess policy.

2. Container definition 1:

   1. Container input option: Select the “Provide model artifacts and inference image location”.

   2. Model Compression Type:

      1. To use a model in the S3 bucket:

         1. When the model is compressed, select “CompressedModel”.
         2. Otherwise, select “UncompressedModel”.

      2. When using a model from the Hugging Face hub, any option would work fine.

   3. Location of inference code image: Specify the ARN of the ECR repo for the Friendli Container.

   4. Location of model artifacts - optional:

      1. To use a model in the S3 bucket:

         1. Specify the S3 URI where your model is stored. You might wish to ensure that the file structure matches the directory format compatible with the --hf-model-name option of the Friendli Container.

      2. When using a model from the Hugging Face hub, you could leave this field empty.

   5. Environment variables:The required environment variables are as follows:

      1. Always required:

         1. FRIENDLI_CONTAINER_SECRET: Your Friendli Container Secret.

            1. Please refer to Preparing Container Secret, to learn how to get the container secret.

         2. SAGEMAKER_MODE: This should be set to True.

         3. SAGEMAKER_NUM_DEVICES: Number of devices to use for the tensor parallelism degree.

      2. Required when using a model in the S3 bucket:

         1. SAGEMAKER_USE_S3: This should be set to True.

      3. Required when using a model from the Hugging Face hub:

         1. SAGEMAKER_HF_MODEL_NAME: The Hugging Face model name (e.g., mistralai/Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2)

         2. For private or gated model repos:

            1. HF_TOKEN: The Hugging Face secret access token.

Step 2: Creating an Endpoint Configuration

1. You can start by clicking on the “Create endpoint configuration” button under Sagemaker > Inference > Endpoint configurations

2. Configure the endpoint configurations.

   1. Endpoint configuration:

      1. Endpoint configuration name: The name of this endpoint configuration.
      2. Type of endpoint: For real-time inference, select “Provisioned”.
   2. Async Invocation Config:

   3. Variants:

      1. To create a “Production” variant, click “Create production variant”.

      2. Select the model that you have created in Step 1.

      3. Configure the instance type and count by clicking on “Edit” in the Actions column.

   4. Create the endpoint configuration by clicking “Create endpoint configuration”.

Step 3: Creating SageMaker Inference Endpoint

1. You can start by clicking the “Create endpoint” button under Sagemaker > Inference > Endpoints.
2. Select “Use an existing endpoint configuration”.
3. Select the endpoint configuration created in Step 2.
4. Finish by clicking on the “Create endpoint” button.

Step 4: Invoking Endpoint

When the endpoint status becomes “In Service”, you can invoke the endpoint with the following script, after filling in the endpoint name and the region name:

Using the boto3 SDK

Next, let’s discover the process for creating a Sagemaker endpoint using the boto3 Python SDK. You can achieve this by using the code snippet below. Be sure to fill in the custom fields, customized for your specific use case:

You can invoke this endpoint by following Step 4 described in the “Using the AWS Console” section. By following these guides, you'll be able to seamlessly deploy your models using Friendli Containers on SageMaker endpoints and leverage their capabilities for real-time inference.

Learn more about Friendli Container and the Friendli Inference on our website!