Big Data Bellevue Meetup March 21, 2024 For more Alluxio events: https://alluxio.io/events/ Speakers: Bin Fan (VP of Open Source, Alluxio) In this presentation, Bin Fan (VP of Open Source @ Alluxio) will address a critical challenge of optimizing data loading for distributed Python applications within AI/ML workloads in the cloud, focusing on popular frameworks like Ray and Hugging Face. Integration of Alluxio’s distributed caching for Python applications is accomplished using the fsspec interface, thus greatly improving data access speeds. This is particularly useful in machine learning workflows, where repeated data reloading across slow, unstable or congested networks can severely affect GPU efficiency and escalate operational costs. Attendees can look forward to practical, hands-on demonstrations showcasing the tangible benefits of Alluxio’s caching mechanism across various real-world scenarios. These demos will highlight the enhancements in data efficiency and overall performance of data-intensive Python applications. This presentation is tailored for developers and data scientists eager to optimize their AI/ML workloads. Discover strategies to accelerate your data processing tasks, making them not only faster but also more cost-efficient.

1. Enhancing Python Data
Loading in the Cloud for AI/ML
Bin Fan, Chief Architect & VP of Open Source @ Alluxio
1

2. Tightly-Coupled Hadoop
& HDFS
Compute-Storage
Separation
On-Prem HDFS
Cloud Data Lake
Single Region &
Single Cloud
Multi-Region/
Hybrid/Multi-Cloud
10yr
Ago
Today
More Elastic, Cheaper, More Scalable
The Evolution of the Modern Data Stack

3. Compute-Storage
Separation
Cloud Data Lake
Multi-Region/
Hybrid/Multi-Cloud
Today
Data is Remote from Compute; Locality is Missing
I/O Challenges
The Evolution of the Modern Data Stack

4. ● GET/PUT operation costs
add up quickly
● Cross-region data transfer
(egress) fees
● GPU cycles are wasted
waiting for data
● Job failures
● Amazon S3 errors:
503 Slow Down
503 Service Unavailable
I/O Challenges
● Analytics SQL: High query
latency because of
retrieving remote data
● Model Training: Training is
slow because of loading
remote data in each epoch
(LISTing lots of small files is
particularly slow)
Performance Cost Reliability

5. 10%
of your data is hot data
Source: Alluxio

6. 10%
of your data is hot data
Data Caching Layer
between compute & storage
Add a
Source: Alluxio

7. Reduce Latency
I/O
Compute I/O
Compute Compute
I/O
(first time retrieving
remote data)
Compute
I/O Compute
Without
Cache
With
Cache
Total job run time is reduced
I/O
Compute Compute
Compute I/O

8. Increase GPU Utilization
I/O
(data loading)
Training I/O
Training Training
I/O
(first time loading
remote data)
Training I/O
Training Training
I/O Training
Training
Without
Cache
With
Cache
GPU is idle idle
I/O
idle
GPU is idle GPU is busy most of the time
GPU utilization is greatly increased

9. Reduce Cloud Storage Cost
Compute
Compute
AWS S3
us-east-1
Without Cache With Cache
AWS S3
us-west-1
AWS S3
us-east-1
Frequently Retrieving Data =
High GET/PUT Operations Costs & Data Transfer
Costs
Fast Access with
Hot Data Cached
AWS S3
us-west-1
Only Retrieve Data When Necessary =
Lower S3 Costs
… …
… …
Data Cache

10. Improve Reliability
Prevent
Network
Congestion
Relieve
Overloaded
Storage
Prevent Job Failures like “503 Service Unavailable” …

11. DATA CACHING LAYER
Observations So Far …
● The evolution of modern data stack poses
challenges for data locality
● You should care about I/O in data lake
because it greatly impacts the
performance, cost & reliability of your
data platform
● Having a data caching layer between
compute and storage can solve the I/O
challenges
● You can use cache for both analytics and
AI workloads
COMPUTE
STORAGE

12. ALLUXIO 12
Accessing Data and
Models In the Cloud
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13. Hybrid/Multi-Cloud ML Platforms
Online ML platform
Serving cluster
Models
Training Data
Models
1
2
3
Offline training platform
Training cluster
DC/Cloud A DC/Cloud B
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Separation of compute and storage

14. Data access:
1. Read data directly from cloud storage
2. Copy data from cloud to local before training
3. Local cache layer for data reuse
4. Distributed cache system
Model access:
1. Pull models directly from cloud storage
Existing Solutions
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15. Option 1: Read From Cloud Storage
● Easy to set up
● Performance are not ideal
■ Model access: Models are repeatedly pulled from cloud storage
■ Data access: Reading data can take more time than actual training
82% of the time
spent by
DataLoader
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16. Option 2: Copy Data To Local Before Training
● Data is now local
■ Faster access + less cost
● Management is hard
■ Must manually delete training data after use
● Local storage space is limited
■ Dataset is huge - limited benefits
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17. Option 3: Local Cache for Data Reuse
Examples: S3FS built-in local cache, Alluxio Fuse SDK
● Reused data is local
■ Faster access + less cost
● Cache layer provider helps data management
■ No manual deletion/supervision
● Cache space is limited
■ Dataset is huge - limited benefits
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18. Option 4: Distributed Cache System
Clients
Worker
Worker
Worker
…
● Training data and trained models can
be kept in cache - distributed.
● Typically with data management
functionalities.
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19. Challenges
1. Performance
● Pulling data from cloud storage is hurting training/serving.
2. Cost
● Repeatedly requesting data from cloud storage is costly.
3. Reliability
● Availability is the key for every service in cloud.
4. Usability
● Manual data management is unfavorable.
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20. ALLUXIO 20
Alluxio as an example
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21. Clients Worker
Worker
…
Masters
Worker
● Use consistent hashing to cache both data
and metadata on workers.
● Worker nodes have plenty space for cache.
Training data and models only need to be
pulled once from cloud storage. Cost --
● No more single point of failure. Reliability ++
● No more performance bottleneck on masters.
Performance ++
● Data management system.
Consistent Hashing for caching
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22. By the numbers
● High Scalability
■ One worker supports 30 - 50 million files
■ Scale linearly - easy to support 10 billions of files
● High Availability
■ 99.99% uptime
■ No single point of failure
● High Performance
■ Faster data loading
● Cloud-native K8s Operator and CSI-FUSE for data access management
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23. Alluxio FUSE
● Expose the Alluxio file system as a local file system.
● Can access the cloud storage just as accessing local storage.
○ cat, ls
○ f = open(“a.txt”, “r”)
● Very low impact for end users
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24. Alluxio CSI x Alluxio FUSE for Data Access
● FUSE: Turn remote dataset in cloud
into local folder for training
● CSI: Launch Alluxio FUSE pod only
when dataset is needed
Alluxio Fuse pod
Fuse
Container
Host Machine
Application pod
Application
Container
Persistent
volume +
claim
mount
mount
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25. ALLUXIO 25
Data Access
Management for
PyTorch
25

26. Under Storage
Integration with PyTorch Training (Alluxio)
Training Node
Get Task Info
Alluxio Client
PyTorch
Get Cluster Info
Send Result
Cache Cluster
Service Registry
Cache Worker
Cache Worker
Execute Task
Cache Worker
Cache Client
Find Worker(s)
Affinity Block
Location
Policy Client-side load
balance
1
2
3
4
5
Cache miss -
Under storage task
26

27. Data Loading Performance
ImageNet (subset)
27
Yelp review

28. 28
Training Directly from Storage (S3-FUSE)
- > 80% of total time is spent in DataLoader
- Result in Low GPU Utilization Rate (<20%)
GPU Utilization Improvement

29. Training with Alluxio-FUSE
- Reduced DataLoader Rate from 82% to 1% (82X)
- Increase GPU Utilization Rate from 17% to 93% (5X)
GPU Utilization Improvement

30. ALLUXIO 30
How to enable Python
Applications
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31. Use Alluxio - Ray Integration as an example
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Ray Dataloader
fsspec - Alluxio
impl
Alluxio Python
client
Ray
etcd
Alluxio Worker
REST API server
Alluxio Worker
REST API server
PyArrow Dataset
loading
Registration
Get worker
addresses

32. Alluxio+Ray Benchmark – Small Files
● Dataset
○ 130GB imagenet dataset
● Process Settings
○ 4 train workers
○ 9 process reading
● Active Object Store Memory
○ 400-500 MiB
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33. Alluxio+Ray Benchmark – Large Parquet files
● Dataset
○ 200MiB files, adds up to
60GiB
● Process Settings
○ 28 train workers
○ 28 process reading
● Active Object Store Memory
○ 20-30 GiB
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34. Cost Saving – Egress/Data Transfer Fees
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35. Cost Saving – API Calls/S3 Operations (List, Get)
List/Get API calls only access Alluxio
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36. ALLUXIO 36
Use Cases
36

37. Alluxio Benefits
30-50%
90% +
Reduce 30%+ time
compare consuming from
Cloud object storage
Manage the on-going training dataset from cold storage
Alluxio server data to GPU with advanced caching capability
Avoid 50%+ data copy
Stable GPU utilization no
matter where you start GPU
cluster
Virtual layer to different
storage
Use case
Autonomous driving

38. THANKS
Any Questions?
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