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Cloud server with Evidently AI

Evidently AI Virtual Machine is a pre-configured cloud server with a tool for evaluating, testing, and monitoring systems based on machine learning (ML) and large language models (LLM). The tool allows you to control the quality of AI systems throughout their entire lifecycle.

The image from which the server is deployed contains:

  • Evidently AI — a tool for evaluating, testing, and monitoring ML and LLM systems;

  • Docker — a platform for running containerized applications;

  • Docker Compose — a tool for running multi-container applications in Docker;

  • nginx — a web server and reverse proxy;

  • drivers required to work with graphics processing units (GPU).

Before creating a server, read the software license agreements included in the image.

Functional capabilities

  • automatic model response quality monitoring, such as data drift;

  • visualizing model performance results for quality assessment by engineers.

Minimum resource requirements

vCPU count2
RAM4 GB
Boot volume20 GB
GPUNot required

Get started with Evidently AI

For Evidently AI to work, the cloud server must be accessible from the internet. To do this, when creating the server, you need to create a private subnet and attach a public floating IP address.

  1. Create a public floating IP address.

  2. Create a cloud server with Evidently AI.

  3. Run Evidently AI.

1. Create a public floating IP address

Create a public floating IP address so that the cloud server with Evidently AI is accessible from the internet.

Use the Create a public floating IP address section of the Public floating IP addresses instructions.

2. Create a cloud server with Evidently AI

  1. In the control panel, in the top menu, click Products and select Cloud Servers.

  2. Click Create server.

  3. Fill in the blocks:

  4. Check the price of the cloud server.

  5. Click Create.

Name and location

  1. Enter the server name. It will be set as the hostname in the operating system.

  2. Select the location where the server will be created. The list of available server configurations and resource costs depends on the location. After the server is created, the location cannot be changed.

Source

  1. Open the Applications tab.

  2. Select Evidently AI VM.

  3. Optional: if you need another current or archived version of the application, in the Version field, select the desired version.

Configuration

Select a configuration starting from 2 vCPUs, RAM from 4 GB, and a boot disk size from 20 GB. For all lines, except for Shared and Dedicated, two types of server configurations are available:

  • fixed configurations — line configurations with different specifications, where the resource ratio is fixed;
  • custom configurations — configurations where you can specify any resource ratio.

Different processors are used in configurations depending on the line and pool segment. You can customize the selected configuration. After creating the server, you will be able to change the configuration.

  1. Open the tab with the line.

  2. Click Fixed.

  3. Optional: you can customize the configuration if you are creating a server in the ru-6 multizone pool segment or ru-3b, ru-7a, and ru-7b pool segments:

    3.1. Expand the block with the configuration settings description.

    3.2. Optional: select a processor vendor. Vendor selection is not available in all pools.

    3.3. Optional: if you do not want the physical processor cores to be pinned to the cloud server vCPUs, clear the Dedicated cores checkbox. For more information, see the Dedicated Cores instructions.

    3.4. Optional: if you want to disable Hyper-Threading for a server with dedicated cores, clear the Hyper-Threading (SMT) checkbox.

    3.5. Optional: if you are creating a server with dedicated cores and want to place a multiprocessor server on a single NUMA node, select the Mandatory placement on a single NUMA node checkbox. A server with 4 vCPUs or more can be placed on a single NUMA node. If the cloud server resources cannot be placed on a single node, it will not be created. For more information, see the Placement on a single NUMA node section of the Dedicated Cores instructions.

  4. Select a configuration.

  5. If both local and network drives are available in the selected configuration, select the drive to be used as the boot drive:

    • local drive — select the Local SSD NVMe drive checkbox. A server with a local drive can only be created from images and applications;
    • network drive — do not select the Local SSD NVMe drive checkbox.

    The amount of RAM allocated to the server may be less than specified in the configuration — the operating system kernel reserves part of the RAM depending on the kernel version and distribution. You can check the allocated amount on the server using the sudo dmesg | grep Memory command.

Disks

  1. If you did not select the Local SSD NVMe drive checkbox when configuring, the first specified network drive will be used as the server boot drive. To configure it:

    1.1. Select the boot network drive type.

    1.2. Specify the network boot drive size in GB or TB. Note the network drive limits on the maximum size.

    1.3. If you selected the Universal v2 or Fast SSD v2 drive type, specify the total number of read and write operations in IOPS. After creating the drive, you can change the number of IOPS — decrease or increase it. The number of IOPS changes is unlimited.

  2. Optional: add an additional network drive of the server :

    2.1. Click Add.

    2.2. Select the network drive type.

    2.3. Specify the network disk size in GB or TB. Note the network drive limits on the maximum size.

    2.4. If you selected the Universal v2 or Fast SSD v2 drive type, specify the total number of read and write operations in IOPS. After creating the drive, you can change the number of IOPS — decrease or increase it. The number of IOPS changes is unlimited.

    After creating the server, you will be able to attach new additional drives.

Internet

Configure public access to the server.

The cloud server will be added to the private subnet connected to the cloud router with 1:1 NAT and internet access. Internet access to and from will be routed through the cloud router. The server will be accessible from the internet via a public floating IP address.

  1. In the Internet connection field, select the Public floating IP address access type.

  2. Select the public floating IP address you created in Step 1.

Private network

  1. In the Subnet field, select a private subnet.

  2. Optional: in the IP address field, change the default IP address.

  3. In the Router field, select an existing router or create a new one.

    If the router is not connected to the internet, it will be automatically connected to the internet after creating the server.

Security

Select security groups to filter traffic on server ports. Without security groups, traffic will be blocked. If the block is missing, traffic filtering (port security) is disabled in the server network. With traffic filtering disabled, all traffic will be allowed.

Access

  1. Place a project SSH key on the server for secure connection:

    1.1. If the project SSH key has not been added to the cloud platform, click Add SSH key, enter the key name, paste the public key in OpenSSH format, and click Add.

    1.2. If the project SSH key has been added to the cloud platform, in the SSH key field, select an existing key. The SSH key is only available in the pool where it is placed.

  2. Optional: in the Password for "root" field:

    2.1. Copy the password of the root user — a user with unlimited rights to perform all actions on the system.

    2.2. Store the password in a secure place and do not share it in plain text.

Additional settings

  1. If you plan to create multiple servers and want to increase infrastructure fault tolerance, add the server to a placement group:

    1.1. To create a new group, in the Placement group field, click Create.

    1.2. Select New group and enter the group name.

    1.3. Select a placement policy on different hosts:

    • optional — soft-anti-affinity. The system will try to place the servers on different hosts. If there is no suitable host when creating the server, it will be created on the same host;
    • mandatory — anti-affinity. Servers in the group must be located on different hosts. If no suitable host is available when creating the server, the server will not be created.

    1.4. If the group is created, in the Placement group field, select the placement group.

  2. To add additional information or filter servers in the list, add server tags. Operating system and configuration tags are added automatically. To add a new tag, in the Tags field, enter the tag.

  3. To add a script that will run using the cloud-init agent at the first operating system boot, in the Automation block, in the User data field:

    • open the Text tab and paste the script as text;
    • or open the File tab and upload the file with the script.

3. Run Evidently AI

  1. In your browser, open http://<ip_address>:3000.

    Specify <ip_address> — the public floating IP address of the cloud server that you created in step 1.

  2. Enter the username — admin.

  3. Enter the password — server UUID. You can copy it in the Control panel: in the top menu, click Products → Cloud Servers → on the server card, click next to the UUID.

  4. Click Log in.