Experimenting with machine learning algorithms or integrating such techniques into an existing environment often presents challenges, like selecting and deploying the right infrastructure, in addition to having the necessary data science background and skills, etc. In this post, we present a service that allows users to train machine learning models, run analyses using trained models, as well as manage data required for such models or analyses. Now machine learning models or the prediction results can be easily integrated in to existing continuous integration (CI) or IT infrastructure using REST API.

Overview

The main components of such a service are Apache OpenWhisk, Red Hat OpenShift, and Ceph Storage. These components are available under AI Library at https://gitlab.com/opendatahub/ai-library. OpenWhisk is a serverless computing platform that provides the interface through which users can submit HTTP requests to train or execute machine learning models. HTTP requests submitted to OpenWhisk are actually targeted to stateless functions, called actions, that run on the platform. Ceph Storage is used for storage of training and prediction data, models and results. Users can submit data in to Ceph backend through OpenWhisk actions provided in our implementation (s3.py) or any custom tools such as RADOS object storage utility that can interact with Ceph storage. The action ‘s3.py’ not only supports Ceph, but also any S3-compatible storage backend.