Sagemaker Deploy

SageMaker deploy

This skill is a model-agnostic deployment contract. The scripts do not select behavior by model name. The agent researches the requested checkpoint, derives its serving requirements, and supplies those decisions as explicit arguments.

Agent owns the model plan

The bundled scripts are generic execution primitives, not a model catalog or a policy engine. The agent must interpret current primary sources and choose the checkpoint, engine, image, hardware, topology, context cap, and request shape. A newly supported model should normally require different arguments, not a code change.

Do not grow the scripts with model profiles or model-name branches. Add code only for a reusable SageMaker capability. If no compatible checkpoint fits a single SageMaker real-time endpoint, choose another official quantization or move to the appropriate SageMaker multi-node path, such as HyperPod, instead of encoding a one-model exception in deploy.py.

Model runtime lookup

Before deriving serving arguments from scratch, look up a known-good configuration for the requested checkpoint in the AWS SageMaker GenAI hosting examples:

https://github.com/aws-samples/sagemaker-genai-hosting-examples/tree/main/01-models

Find the requested model or an architecturally similar one and adopt its engine, image family, instance and topology, context cap, and required SM_VLLM_* / SM_SGLANG_* options as the starting point. This does not change the model-neutral contract: any configuration found is supplied through generic CLI arguments (--image, --instance, --env, --smoke-inputs, --capacity-reservation-arn), never added to the scripts. Use the model publisher's model card for anything the examples do not cover.

Always re-validate against current reality before deploying: resolve the newest compatible DLC (reuse an example's pinned image only if it still exists in ECR), confirm the checkpoint's required GPU microarchitecture and quantization support, check endpoint quota, and size context and concurrency to the measured KV-cache budget.

If no matching example exists, or the example is stale (superseded DLC tag, deprecated flag, or an older engine version than the checkpoint needs), do not block: fall back to first-principles research from the model card and proceed. Treat examples as a starting point, not an authority. A dated example never overrides current DLC, quota, or hardware facts.

Required sequence

1. Run the Model runtime lookup above, then identify the exact model repository, license, checkpoint format, engine support, minimum engine version, weight size, and native context length. A borrowed config is a starting point to validate, not a substitute for these facts.
2. Choose a checkpoint and instance whose aggregate GPU memory can hold weights, non-quantized layers, runtime buffers, and the intended KV cache.
3. Resolve the repository to an immutable commit and stream it into S3 with scripts/stage_model.py. Do not create a workstation model snapshot.
4. Select vLLM or SGLang, an endpoint pattern, a context cap, tensor parallelism, and any model-required engine arguments.
5. Run scripts/deploy.py without --deploy and review the complete plan.
6. Deploy, wait for InService, and invoke an OpenAI-compatible smoke request.
7. Report the model revision, S3 prefix, image, instance, endpoint, optional Inference Component, and smoke-test result.
8. Delete endpoint compute with scripts/teardown.py --yes when validation is complete.

Do not add per-model conditionals or profiles to the scripts.

Direct-to-S3 staging

The staging controller resolves a Hugging Face repository to a commit SHA and starts a CPU SageMaker Processing job:

python scripts/stage_model.py \
  --hf-model-id organization/model-name

python scripts/stage_model.py \
  --hf-model-id organization/model-name \
  --destination s3://bucket/models/model-name/ \
  --run

The worker streams each HTTP response into an S3 multipart upload, records the repository, revision, blob ID, and size as object metadata, skips matching objects on rerun, and writes .hf-model-manifest.json only after all files verify. It never writes model weights to the caller's filesystem.

For a gated repository, store the Hugging Face token in AWS Secrets Manager and pass --hf-token-secret-id. The caller and Processing execution role both need secretsmanager:GetSecretValue. Do not commit a token, place it in command-line arguments, or expose it in a Processing job environment.

Deployment inputs

The agent must determine these values for the requested model:

scripts/deploy.py accepts these as explicit arguments. It validates the S3 layout, endpoint quota, GPU count, image compatibility, and JSON inputs before creating resources.

Serving engine

Use the newest compatible canonical SageMaker DLC unless the user requests a pinned image. Resolve images from AWS ECR registry 763104351884, repository vllm or sglang, and ignore EC2, SOCI, server aliases, and non-semantic tags.

Current Blackwell containers require CUDA 13 and the AL2023 SageMaker GPU inference AMI:

al2023-ami-sagemaker-inference-gpu-4-1

Pass model-specific server options through --env; do not encode them in Python conditionals. The DLC entrypoints convert each SM_VLLM_* or SM_SGLANG_* variable directly into a CLI option. Use JSON booleans for presence-only flags: true emits the bare flag and false omits it. Use strings or numbers only for options that take a value.

Endpoint pattern

Use a standard endpoint when one model consumes the full instance. The production variant references the SageMaker Model directly.

Use an Inference Component when the model is intentionally packable. The endpoint configuration provisions the host, then the Inference Component declares accelerator count and minimum host memory.

Both paths use CreateModel.PrimaryContainer.ModelDataSource.S3DataSource with S3DataType=S3Prefix and CompressionType=None.

Preflight guards

• The S3 prefix must contain config.json and at least one recognized weight file.
• Require .hf-model-manifest.json and verify every listed file size before deployment. Use --allow-unverified-s3 only for an externally staged prefix that was independently verified.
• Prefer an official publisher or hardware-vendor checkpoint over an unverified community quantization. Confirm its license separately.
• Engine compatibility has three independent parts: model architecture, checkpoint quantization, and the minimum package version. Supporting the base architecture does not prove support for a particular quantized checkpoint.
• Check the checkpoint's required GPU microarchitecture. A model that fits in aggregate memory can still be incompatible with the selected GPU generation.
• Endpoint quota must be at least one. Quota does not guarantee capacity.
• Tensor parallelism must match the allocated GPU topology unless the engine's documented topology requires otherwise.
• The execution role must trust sagemaker.amazonaws.com and read the model prefix.
• Use --capacity-reservation-arn for time-sensitive scarce capacity.
• Configure a fallback only when it has enough GPU memory and a valid parallelism plan for the same checkpoint.
• Do not default to a model's maximum advertised context. Size context and concurrency from measured KV-cache usage.
• For a newly released architecture, verify that the selected DLC contains the required transformers version or native engine implementation. A newer engine version alone is not sufficient.
• Use a standard endpoint for a model that consumes the whole instance; do not add Inference Component packing semantics without a packing use case.
• Resolve the newest compatible DLC for exploration, then pin the image that passed validation for reproducible deployments.

Reference commands

python scripts/config.py
python scripts/stage_model.py --hf-model-id organization/model-name
python scripts/stage_model.py --hf-model-id organization/model-name --run

python scripts/deploy.py \
  --model-id model-name \
  --model-s3 s3://bucket/models/model-name/ \
  --instance ml.gpu-instance \
  --engine vllm \
  --max-model-len 16384

python scripts/deploy.py <same-arguments> --deploy
python scripts/smoke_test.py --endpoint ENDPOINT
python scripts/smoke_test.py --endpoint ENDPOINT --ic INFERENCE_COMPONENT
python scripts/teardown.py --endpoint ENDPOINT --yes

Primary references

Use the requested model publisher's model card as the source of model-specific serving arguments. Browse the AWS model examples for a matching model family or an architecturally similar SageMaker deployment:

• AWS SageMaker GenAI hosting model examples
• AWS vLLM DLC documentation
• AWS SGLang DLC documentation

Handoff

Pass the endpoint and optional Inference Component name to sagemaker-benchmark. Standard endpoints omit the component. Keep intentional S3 model artifacts, but remove real-time endpoint compute after testing.