Configuration

Plugin maintains the configuration in the conf/base/vertexai.yaml file. Sample configuration can be generated using kedro vertexai init:

# Configuration used to run the pipeline
project_id: my-gcp-mlops-project
region: europe-west1
run_config:
  # Name of the image to run as the pipeline steps
  image: eu.gcr.io/my-gcp-mlops-project/example_model:${commit_id}

  # Pull policy to be used for the steps. Use Always if you push the images
  # on the same tag, or Never if you use only local images
  image_pull_policy: IfNotPresent

  # Location of Vertex AI GCS root
  root: bucket_name/gcs_suffix

  # Name of the kubeflow experiment to be created
  experiment_name: MyExperiment

  # Name of the scheduled run, templated with the schedule parameters
  scheduled_run_name: MyExperimentRun

  # Optional pipeline description
  #description: "Very Important Pipeline"

  # How long to keep underlying Argo workflow (together with pods and data
  # volume after pipeline finishes) [in seconds]. Default: 1 week
  ttl: 604800

  # What Kedro pipeline should be run as the last step regardless of the
  # pipeline status. Used to send notifications or raise the alerts
  # on_exit_pipeline: notify_via_slack

  # Optional section allowing adjustment of the resources
  # reservations and limits for the nodes
  resources:

    # For nodes that require more RAM you can increase the "memory"
    data-import-node:
      memory: 2Gi

    # Training nodes can utilize more than one CPU if the algorithm
    # supports it
    model-training-node:
      cpu: 8
      memory: 60Gi

    # GPU-capable nodes can request 1 GPU slot
    tensorflow-node:
      gpu: 1

    # Resources can be also configured via nodes tag
    # (if there is node name and tag configuration for the same
    # resource, tag configuration is overwritten with node one)
    gpu_node_tag:
      cpu: 1
      gpu: 2

    # Default settings for the nodes
    __default__:
      cpu: 200m
      memory: 64Mi

  # Optional section allowing to configure node selectors constraints
  # like gpu accelerator for nodes with gpu resources.
  # (Note that not all accelerators are available in all
  # regions - https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/gpus/gpu-regions-zones)
  # and not for all machines and resources configurations - 
  # https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/docs/training/configure-compute#specifying_gpus
  node_selectors:
    gpu_node_tag:
      cloud.google.com/gke-accelerator: NVIDIA_TESLA_T4
    tensorflow-step:
      cloud.google.com/gke-accelerator: NVIDIA_TESLA_K80
      
  # Optional section allowing to generate config files at runtime,
  # useful e.g. when you need to obtain credentials dynamically and store them in credentials.yaml
  # but the credentials need to be refreshed per-node
  # (which in case of Vertex AI would be a separate container / machine)
  # Example:
  # dynamic_config_providers:
  #  - cls: kedro_vertexai.auth.gcp.MLFlowGoogleOAuthCredentialsProvider
  #    params:
  #      client_id: iam-client-id

  dynamic_config_providers: []

Dynamic configuration support

kedro-vertexai contains hook that enables TemplatedConfigLoader. It allows passing environment variables to configuration files. It reads all environment variables following KEDRO_CONFIG_<NAME> pattern, which you can later inject in configuration file using ${name} syntax.

This feature is especially useful for keeping the executions of the pipelines isolated and traceable by dynamically setting output paths for intermediate data in the Data Catalog, e.g.

# ...
train_x:
  type: pandas.CSVDataSet
  filepath: gs://<bucket>/kedro-vertexai/${run_id}/05_model_input/train_x.csv

train_y:
  type: pandas.CSVDataSet
  filepath: gs://<bucket>/kedro-vertexai/${run_id}/05_model_input/train_y.csv
# ...

In this case, the ${run_id} placeholder will be substituted by the unique run identifier from Vertex AI Pipelines.

There are two special variables KEDRO_CONFIG_COMMIT_ID, KEDRO_CONFIG_BRANCH_NAME with support specifying default when variable is not set, e.g. ${commit_id|dirty}

Disabling dynamic configuration hook

In current Kedro versions (<=0.18) only single configuration hook can be attached, which means if your project had a custom one, this plug-in will most likely overwrite it. You can disable this plugin’s configuration hook by setting environment variable KEDRO_VERTEXAI_DISABLE_CONFIG_HOOK to true, e.g.:

export KEDRO_VERTEXAI_DISABLE_CONFIG_HOOK=true

Once set, the plugin will provide a clear warning with a reminder:

KEDRO_VERTEXAI_DISABLE_CONFIG_HOOK environment variable is set and EnvTemplatedConfigLoader will not be used which means formatted config values like ${run_id} will not be substituted at runtime

To make plugin-compatible custom config loader you can extend the class kedro_vertexai.context_helper.EnvTemplatedConfigLoader and register your own hook.

Dynamic config providers

When running the job in VertexAI it’s possible to generate new configuration files at runtime if that’s required, one example could be generating Kedro credentials on a Vertex AI’s node level (the opposite would be supplying the credentials when starting the job).

Example:

run_config:
  # ... 
  dynamic_config_providers:
    - cls: kedro_vertexai.auth.gcp.MLFlowGoogleOAuthCredentialsProvider
      params:
        client_id: iam-client-id

The cls fields should contain a fully qualified reference to a class implementing abstract kedro_vertexai.dynamic_config.DynamicConfigProvider. All params will be passed as kwargs to the class’s constructor. Two required methods are:

@property
def target_config_file(self) -> str:
    return "name-of-the-config-file.yml"

def generate_config(self) -> dict:
    return {
        "layout": {
            "of-the-target": {
                "config-file": "value"
            }
        }
    }

First one - target_config_file should return the name of the configuration file to be generated (e.g. credentials.yml) and the generate_config should return a dictionary, which will be then serialized into the target file as YAML. If the target file already exists during the invocation, it will be merged (see method kedro_vertexai.dynamic_config.DynamicConfigProvider.merge_with_existing ) with the existing one and then saved again. Note that the generate_config has access to an initialized plugin config via self.config property, so any values from the vertexai.yml configuration is accessible.

Resources configuration

Optional resources and node_selectors sections enable adjustment of the resources reservations and limits for the selected Kedro nodes. Settings for individual nodes, we can define in two ways - using the name of the node or its tag (if there is node name and tag configuration for the same resource, tag configuration is overwritten with node one). For example, with the vertexai.yaml configuration file shown at the beginning of the chapter and the Kedro pipeline containing such a node:

def create_pipeline(**kwargs):
    return Pipeline(
        [
            node(
                func=train_model,
                inputs=["X_train", "y_train"],
                outputs="regressor",
                name="model_training_node",
                tags="gpu_node_tag",
            ),
        ]
    )

we expect this particular node to run with two NVIDIA_TESLA_T4 GPUs, eight CPUs, and memory allocated according to the specified 60Gi limit. (Note that not all accelerators are available in all regions and not for all machines and resources configurations)