Vast.ai Core Workflow A: Instance Provisioning & Job Execution

Overview

Primary workflow for Vast.ai: search for GPU offers, provision an instance, transfer data, execute a training or inference job, collect artifacts, and destroy the instance to stop billing. This is the money-path operation for every Vast.ai user.

Prerequisites

• Completed vastai-install-auth setup
• Docker image published to a registry (Docker Hub, GHCR, etc.)
• SSH key uploaded to Vast.ai
• Training data accessible via URL or local path

Instructions

Step 1: Search Offers with Filters

import subprocess, json

def search_offers(gpu_name="RTX_4090", min_vram=24, min_reliability=0.95,
                  max_price=0.50, num_gpus=1):
    """Search Vast.ai marketplace with specific filters."""
    query = (
        f"num_gpus={num_gpus} gpu_name={gpu_name} "
        f"gpu_ram>={min_vram} reliability>{min_reliability} "
        f"inet_down>200 dph_total<={max_price} rentable=true"
    )
    result = subprocess.run(
        ["vastai", "search", "offers", query, "--order", "dph_total", "--raw"],
        capture_output=True, text=True, check=True,
    )
    offers = json.loads(result.stdout)
    print(f"Found {len(offers)} offers matching criteria")
    for o in offers[:5]:
        print(f"  ID {o['id']}: {o['gpu_name']} {o['gpu_ram']}GB "
              f"${o['dph_total']:.3f}/hr reliability={o['reliability2']:.3f}")
    return offers

Step 2: Provision an Instance

def provision_instance(offer_id, image, disk_gb=50, onstart_cmd=""):
    """Create an instance from the best offer."""
    cmd = [
        "vastai", "create", "instance", str(offer_id),
        "--image", image,
        "--disk", str(disk_gb),
    ]
    if onstart_cmd:
        cmd.extend(["--onstart-cmd", onstart_cmd])

    result = subprocess.run(cmd, capture_output=True, text=True, check=True)
    instance_info = json.loads(result.stdout)
    instance_id = instance_info.get("new_contract")
    print(f"Instance {instance_id} provisioning...")
    return instance_id

Step 3: Wait for Instance Ready

import time

def wait_for_instance(instance_id, timeout=300):
    """Poll until instance status is 'running'."""
    start = time.time()
    while time.time() - start < timeout:
        result = subprocess.run(
            ["vastai", "show", "instance", str(instance_id), "--raw"],
            capture_output=True, text=True,
        )
        info = json.loads(result.stdout)
        status = info.get("actual_status", "unknown")
        print(f"  Status: {status}")
        if status == "running":
            ssh_host = info.get("ssh_host")
            ssh_port = info.get("ssh_port")
            print(f"  SSH: ssh -p {ssh_port} root@{ssh_host}")
            return info
        time.sleep(15)
    raise TimeoutError(f"Instance {instance_id} did not start within {timeout}s")

Step 4: Transfer Data and Execute Job

# Upload training data to instance
scp -P $SSH_PORT ./data/training.tar.gz root@$SSH_HOST:/workspace/

# Execute training job remotely
ssh -p $SSH_PORT root@$SSH_HOST << 'REMOTE'
cd /workspace
tar xzf training.tar.gz
python train.py --epochs 10 --batch-size 32 --output /workspace/checkpoints/
REMOTE

Step 5: Collect Artifacts and Destroy

def cleanup_instance(instance_id, ssh_host, ssh_port, output_dir="./results"):
    """Download results and destroy instance."""
    import os
    os.makedirs(output_dir, exist_ok=True)

    # Download model checkpoints
    subprocess.run([
        "scp", "-P", str(ssh_port), "-r",
        f"root@{ssh_host}:/workspace/checkpoints/",
        output_dir,
    ], check=True)
    print(f"Artifacts saved to {output_dir}")

    # CRITICAL: Destroy instance to stop billing
    subprocess.run(["vastai", "destroy", "instance", str(instance_id)], check=True)
    print(f"Instance {instance_id} destroyed — billing stopped")

Complete Workflow

# End-to-end: search → provision → run → collect → destroy
offers = search_offers(gpu_name="RTX_4090", max_price=0.30)
if not offers:
    raise RuntimeError("No offers available")

instance_id = provision_instance(
    offer_id=offers[0]["id"],
    image="pytorch/pytorch:2.2.0-cuda12.1-cudnn8-runtime",
    disk_gb=50,
    onstart_cmd="pip install transformers datasets",
)
info = wait_for_instance(instance_id)
# ... transfer data, run job, collect results ...
cleanup_instance(instance_id, info["ssh_host"], info["ssh_port"])

Output

• GPU instance provisioned from the cheapest matching offer
• Training job executed with GPU acceleration
• Model checkpoints and logs downloaded locally
• Instance destroyed (billing stopped)

Error Handling

Resources

• Search & Filter Offers
• Instance Management
• CLI Reference
• REST API Overview

Next Steps

For multi-instance orchestration and cost optimization, see vastai-core-workflow-b.

Examples

Fine-tune LLM: Search for A100 80GB offers, provision with the huggingface/transformers image, upload a LoRA config, run fine-tuning for 3 epochs, download the adapter weights, destroy the instance.

Batch inference: Provision 4 cheap RTX 4090 instances in parallel, distribute an inference dataset across them, collect results, and destroy all instances in a loop.