The more time the data science teams spend on model training, the less business value is added because no value is created until that model is deployed in production. Traditional HDD-based systems are not suitable for training, which is very IO intensive due to complex transformations that are involved during data preparation. Moreover, Training is not a one-time process. Trends and patterns in the data keep changing rapidly, hence models need to be retrained to address drift issues to continually improve performance in production. Data scientists often experiment with thousands of models, and speeding up the process has significant business implications. In this talk, we will cover how you can accelerate an AI/ML pipeline by speeding up data loads using the Aerospike database which leverages its hybrid memory architecture to achieve sub-millisecond read/writes. In a hybrid memory architecture the index is stored in-memory (not persisted), and data is stored on persistent storage (SSD) and read directly from the disk. Disk I/O is not required to access the index. For time-sensitive and high throughput use cases such as fraud detection, you need a transactional database at the edge that can handle high-velocity ingestion and support millions of IOPS. The events are then streamed downstream to your AL/ML platform for training or your inference server for predictions. We will share the reference architecture of a highly performant AI/ML training and inference pipelines consisting of Apache Pulsar, Apache Spark 3.0, Aerospike database, and its Spark and Pulsar connectors. This architecture can be extended to other use cases that demand low latency and high throughput while not blowing your budget.

1. Pulsar Virtual Summit North
America 2021
Kiran Matty
Director of Product Management
Aerospike

2. 2 Pulsar Virtual Summit North
America 2021
▪ Director of Product for Ecosystem @ Aerospike
▪ Domain experience spans Big Data Infrastructure
and Data Security @ Visa, Hortonworks, and Cisco
▪ Interests include large scale distributed systems
and AI/ML
▪ Lego builder in spare time
whoami

3. 3 Pulsar Virtual Summit North
America 2021
Source: Google I/O 2018
Training can take Forever…
TRAINING TIME
Minutes – hours
1 - 4 Days
1 - 4 Weeks
> 1 month

4. 4 Pulsar Virtual Summit North
America 2021
Source: Micron
▪ Traditional HDD
based systems are
not suitable for
Training
▪ Model need to be
retrained to
address data
/Model drift
AI/ML needs Hybrid Storage

5. 5 Pulsar Virtual Summit North
America 2021
AI/ML needs memory-like access at Petabyte scale with lower
TCO

6. 6 Pulsar Virtual Summit North
America 2021
Why do other databases fall short?

7. Pulsar Virtual Summit North
America 2021
High Frequency Trading IIoT / Predictive Maintenance
Aerospike Drives data-driven decisioning use cases
is it fresh
Fraud Detection Personalization/Customer 360o AdTech Real Time Bidding

8. 8 Pulsar Virtual Summit North
America 2021
CLOUD /
ON-PREM
8
CONNECT
for Spark
Python Client
COMPUTE
STORAGE
NOTEBOOK &
ML PACKAGES
CONTAINER
PLATFORM
A Blueprint for AI/ML
CONNECT
for Pulsar

9. 9 Pulsar Virtual Summit North
America 2021
Why Pulsar?
Durability
Scalability Geo-Replication
Multi-Tenancy
Unified Messaging
Model

10. 10 Pulsar Virtual Summit North
America 2021
Mapping Aerospike <> Pulsar Data models
Aerospike RDBMS Pulsar
Namespace Database Topic
Set(optional) Table Topic
Record Row Record
Bin Column Fields (based
on schema)
Key Key Key
Mapping is via YAML files.

11. 11 Pulsar Virtual Summit North
America 2021
Pub/Sub
API
Pub/Sub
API
Reader and
Batch API
Pulsar
IO/Connectors
Stream Processor
Applications
Prebuilt Connectors Custom Connectors
Aerospike Sink Connector*
Microservices or
Event-Driven Architecture
Publisher
Aerospike Source Connector
Subscriber
Aerospike Connect for Pulsar
IOT/edge devices
Change Notification:
{"metadata":{"namespace":"device","set":"streaming_write_set"
,"digest":"SH0QwiJxdW5Wkf/hAVJGn7Sw37U=","msg":"write","ge
n":38,"lut":0,"exp":0},"three":37089,"two":"two_89","one":37089}
Change
Notification
s
*Not GA’d
Schema Registry

12. 12 Pulsar Virtual Summit North
America 2021
Data
Preparation
Model
Training
Third Party Data
Exploratory
Data
Analysis
Parameter
Tuning
Data Scientist
Model
Validation
MODEL
SERVING
Speeding up Training Pipeline (Conceptual View)
CONNECT
for Spark
Aerospike
Database
System of
Record
AI/ML Platform
ML
Application
HTTP
1
2
4
3

13. 13 Pulsar Virtual Summit North
America 2021
Real-time Inference (Conceptual View)
Edge Systems
across Datacenters
Data
Preparation
HTTP
Model
Serving
Predictions
ML
Application Predictions
Aerospike
Database
Core System
Streaming
Source
CONNECT
for Pulsar
CONNECT
for Pulsar
Application
Specialist
Aerospike
Database
Edge Location 1
Aerospike
Database
Edge Location n
XDR
CONNECT
for Spark
HTTP
API
API
API
Pulsar Spark
Connector

14. 14 Pulsar Virtual Summit North
America 2021
Massive Parallelization
✔80% reduction in Spark Job Execution time
✔Reduced training time
✔Increase frequency of retraining
Operational reliability at extreme scale
✔13B Objects
✔150 TB unique data – multiple times a day
Increased ROI
✔Only 33 Aerospike servers
✔Increased utilization of Spark Cluster (300
nodes and 7,500 cores)
Massive Parallelism w/ Aerospike and Spark
CASE STUDY:
“We were using custom code before which led to data
quality issues and a complex data infrastructure. With
Aerospike, we are processing Spark jobs that used to take
12 hours now in just 2.4.
Senior Director, Data Science and Engineering
Top Global Ad Tech company
GLOBAL AD TECH
COMPANY

15. 15 Pulsar Virtual Summit North
America 2021
Execute Spark jobs faster with massive
parallelism
1. Reduce Training Time
3. Increase Frequency of Re-Training
Conduct in-place data exploration
Create low latency and high throughput
streaming pipeline
1
2
3
The Aerospike
Difference for
AI/ML
Eliminate compliance headaches by removing the need to
copy data into multiple systems
“Aerospike is second to none for
ingesting and persisting millions of
events per second… (Aerospike)
allows me to do near-instantaneous
machine learning on the data as it
lands.”
Theresa Melvin
Chief Architect of AI-Driven Big Data Solutions, HPE
2. Maximize ROI
Aerospike data platform connects readily to Spark
and Pulsar

16. 16 Pulsar Virtual Summit North
America 2021
Thank you
We are hiring for our India and the US offices.
https://aerospike.com/solutions/use-cases/ai-ml/