Scaling Large Language Models with Ray and Kubernetes for Production‑Grade Inference
Table of Contents Introduction Why Scaling LLM Inference Is Hard Overview of Ray and Its Role in Distributed Inference Kubernetes as the Orchestration Backbone Architectural Blueprint: Ray on Kubernetes Step‑by‑Step Implementation 6.1 Preparing the Model Container 6.2 Deploying a Ray Cluster on K8s 6.3 Writing the Inference Service 6.4 Autoscaling with Ray Autoscaler & K8s HPA 6.5 Observability & Monitoring Real‑World Production Considerations 7.1 GPU Allocation Strategies 7.2 Model Versioning & Rolling Updates 7.3 Security & Multi‑Tenant Isolation Performance Benchmarks & Cost Analysis Conclusion Resources Introduction Large language models (LLMs) such as GPT‑3, Llama 2, and Claude have moved from research curiosities to production‑critical components that power chatbots, code assistants, summarizers, and many other AI‑driven services. While training these models demands massive clusters and weeks of compute, serving them in real time presents a different set of engineering challenges: ...