Checkpointing

Infra behind Krea 2: How to train and serve at scale — Gabriel Jorge Menezes, Krea.ai

Infra behind Krea 2: How to train and serve at scale — Gabriel Jorge Menezes, Krea.ai

Krea's Gabriel Jorge Menezes shares critical insights into building the infrastructure for large-scale ML model training and serving. Key takeaways include the necessity of custom metrics beyond standard GPU utilization, aggressive checkpointing on ultra-fast storage to counter frequent cluster crashes, and a dynamic Kubernetes-based system using gang scheduling, virtual-kubelet, and taints to seamlessly shift inference workloads to external providers when training consumes on-prem GPUs. The approach highlights practical solutions for silent failures, thermal management, and optimizing resource utilization in a unified production and training environment.

Your Agents Need a Save Button - Hamza Tahir, ZenML

Your Agents Need a Save Button - Hamza Tahir, ZenML

Most AI agents lack a "save button" for persistent state, making debugging and optimization challenging. This talk introduces the concept of a durable runtime with checkpointing, allowing developers to replay agent executions, perform "what-if" analyses (e.g., swapping models, mocking tools), and conduct cohort-based evaluations using production data. The open-source tool Kitaru is demonstrated as a solution to build, debug, and improve agents at scale by capturing full execution state, not just traces.