When running a natural language processing (NLP) model in your OpenSearch cluster with a machine learning (ML) node, you can achieve better performance on the ML node using graphics processing unit (GPU) acceleration. GPUs can work in tandem with the CPU of your cluster to speed up the model upload and training.
If you need GPU power, you can provision GPU instances through [Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/). For more information on how to provision a GPU instance, see [Recommended GPU Instances](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/dlami/latest/devguide/gpu.html).
## Supported images
You can use GPU acceleration with both [Docker images](https://gitlab.com/nvidia/container-images/cuda/blob/master/doc/supported-tags.md) with CUDA 11.6 and [Amazon Machine Images (AMIs)](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/AMIs.html).
## PyTorch
GPU-accelerated ML nodes require [PyTorch](https://pytorch.org/docs/stable/index.html) 1.12.1 work with ML models.
## Setting up a GPU-accelerated ML node
Depending on the GPU, you can provision a GPU-accelerated ML node manually or by using automated initialization scripts.
### Preparing an NVIDIA ML node
NVIDIA uses CUDA to increase node performance. In order to take advantage of CUDA, you need to make sure that your drivers include the `nvidia-uvm` kernel inside the `/dev` directory. To check for the kernel, enter `ls -al /dev | grep nvidia-uvm`.
If the `nvidia-uvm` kernel does not exist, run `nvidia-uvm-init.sh`:
After verifying that `nvidia-uvm` exists under `/dev`, you can start OpenSearch inside your cluster.
### Preparing AWS Inferentia ML node
Depending on the Linux operating system running on AWS Inferentia, you can use the following commands and scripts to provision an ML node and run OpenSearch inside your cluster.
To start, [download and install OpenSearch]({{site.url}}{{site.baseurl}}/install-and-configure/index/) on your cluster.
Then export OpenSearch and set up your environment variables. This example exports OpenSearch into the directory `opensearch-2.5.0`, so `OPENSEARCH_HOME` = `opensearch-2.5.0`:
```
echo "export OPENSEARCH_HOME=~/opensearch-2.5.0" | tee -a ~/.bash_profile
echo "export PYTORCH_VERSION=1.12.1" | tee -a ~/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile
```
Next, create a shell script file called `prepare_torch_neuron.sh`. You can copy and customize one of the following examples based on your Linux operating system:
echo "export PYTORCH_EXTRA_LIBRARY_PATH=$OPENSEARCH_HOME/lib/torch_neuron/lib/libtorchneuron.so" | tee -a ~/.bash_profile
# Increase JVm stack size to >=2MB
echo "-Xss2m" | tee -a $OPENSEARCH_HOME/config/jvm.options
# Increase max file descriptors to 65535
echo "$(whoami) - nofile 65535" | sudo tee -a /etc/security/limits.conf
# max virtual memory areas vm.max_map_count to 262144
sudo sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=262144
```
When the script completes running, open a new terminal for the settings to take effect. Then, start OpenSearch.
OpenSearch should now be running inside your GPU-accelerated cluster. However, if any errors occur during provisioning, you can install the GPU accelerator drivers manually.
#### Prepare ML node manually
If the previous two scripts do not provision your GPU-accelerated node properly, you can install the drivers for AWS Inferentia manually:
1. Deploy an AWS accelerator instance based on your chosen Linux operating system. For instructions, see [Deploy on AWS accelerator instance](https://awsdocs-neuron.readthedocs-hosted.com/en/latest/frameworks/torch/torch-neuron/setup/pytorch-install.html#deploy-on-aws-ml-accelerator-instance).
2. Copy the Neuron library into OpenSearch. The following command uses a directory named `opensearch-2.5.0`:
```
OPENSEARCH_HOME=~/opensearch-2.5.0
```
3. Set the `PYTORCH_EXTRA_LIBRARY_PATH` path. In this example, we create a `pytorch` virtual environment in the OPENSEARCH_HOME folder:
4. (Optional) To monitor the GPU usage of your accelerator instance, install [Neuron tools](https://awsdocs-neuron.readthedocs-hosted.com/en/latest/tools/index.html), which allows models to be used inside your instance:
```
# Install Neuron Tools
sudo apt-get install aws-neuronx-tools -y
```
```
# Add Neuron tools your PATH
export PATH=/opt/aws/neuron/bin:$PATH
```
```
# Test Neuron tools
neuron-top
```
5. To make sure you have enough memory to upload a model, increase the JVM stack size to `>+2MB`:
```
echo "-Xss2m" | sudo tee -a $OPENSEARCH_HOME/config/jvm.options
```
6. Start OpenSearch.
## Troubleshooting
Due to the amount of data required to work with ML models, you might encounter the following `max file descriptors` or `vm.max_map_count` errors when trying to run OpenSearch in a your cluster:
```
[1]: max file descriptors [8192] for opensearch process is too low, increase to at least [65535]
[2]: max virtual memory areas vm.max_map_count [65530] is too low, increase to at least [262144]
```
To troubleshoot the max file descriptors error, run the following command:
```
echo "$(whoami) - nofile 65535" | sudo tee -a /etc/security/limits.conf
```
To fix the `vm.max_map_count` error, run this command to increase the count to `262114`:
```
sudo sysctl -w vm.max_map_count=262144
```
## Next steps
If you want to try a GPU-accelerated cluster using AWS Inferentia with a pretrained HuggingFace model, see [Compiling and Deploying HuggingFace Pretrained BERT](https://awsdocs-neuron.readthedocs-hosted.com/en/latest/src/examples/pytorch/bert_tutorial/tutorial_pretrained_bert.html).
