Helping Hand Questions for Professional-Machine-Learning-Engineer

Oscillation in the loss during batch training of a neural network means that the model is overshooting the optimal point of the loss function and bouncing back and forth. This can prevent the model from converging to the minimum loss value. One of the main reasons for this phenomenon is that the learning rate hyperparameter, which controls the size of the steps that the model takes along the gradient, is too high. Therefore, decreasing the learning rate hyperparameter can help the model take smaller and more precise steps and avoid oscillation. This is a common technique to improve the stability and performance of neural network training12.

References:

Interpreting Loss Curves

Is learning rate the only reason for training loss oscillation after few epochs?

When you deploy a custom container to Vertex AI Model Registry, you need to follow some requirements for the container configuration. One of these requirements is to use the HTTP port 8080 for serving predictions. If you use a different port, the model server might not be able to communicate with Vertex AI and cause the error “Error model server never became ready”. To fix this error, you need to change the HTTP port in your model’s configuration to the default value of 8080 and redeploy the container. References:

Custom container requirements documentation

Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate

 The best option for continuing experimenting and iterating on your pipeline to improve model performance, using Cloud Build for CI/CD, and deploying new pipelines into production quickly and easily, is to set up a CI/CD pipeline that builds and tests your source code and then deploys built artifacts into a pre-production environment. After a successful pipeline run in the pre-production environment, deploy the pipeline to production. This option allows you to leverage the power and simplicity of Cloud Build to automate, monitor, and manage your pipeline development and deployment workflow. Cloud Build is a service that can create and run continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines on Google Cloud. Cloud Build can build your source code, run unit tests, and deploy built artifacts to various Google Cloud services, such as Vertex AI Pipelines, Vertex AI Endpoints, and Artifact Registry. A CI/CD pipeline is a workflow that can automate the process of building, testing, and deploying software. A CI/CD pipeline can help you improve the quality and reliability of your software, accelerate the development and delivery cycle, and reduce the manual effort and errors. A pre-production environment is an environment that can simulate the production environment, but is isolated from the real users and data. A pre-production environment can help you test and validate your software before deploying it to production, and catch any bugs or issues that may affect the user experience or the system performance. By setting up a CI/CD pipeline that builds and tests your source code and then deploys built artifacts into a pre-production environment, you can ensure that your pipeline code is consistent and error-free, and that your pipeline artifacts are compatible and functional. After a successful pipeline run in the pre-production environment, you can deploy the pipeline to production, which is the environment where your software is accessible and usable by the real users and data. By deploying the pipeline to production after a successful pipeline run in the pre-production environment, you can minimize the chance that the new pipeline implementations will break in production, and ensure that your software meets the user expectations and requirements1.

The other options are not as good as option C, for the following reasons:

Option A: Setting up a CI/CD pipeline that builds and tests your source code, and if the tests are successful, using the Google Cloud console to upload the built container to Artifact Registry and upload the compiled pipeline to Vertex AI Pipelines would not allow you to deploy new pipelines into production quickly and easily, and could increase the manual effort and errors. The Google Cloud console is a web-based user interface that can help you access and manage various Google Cloud services, such as Artifact Registry and Vertex AI Pipelines. Artifact Registry is a service that can store and manage your container images and other artifacts on Google Cloud. Artifact Registry can help you upload and organize your container images, and track the image versions and metadata. Vertex AI Pipelines is a service that can orchestrate machine learning workflows using Vertex AI. Vertex AI Pipelines can run preprocessing and training steps on custom Docker images, and evaluate, deploy, and monitor the machine learning model. However, setting up a CI/CD pipeline that builds and tests your source code, and if the tests are successful, using the Google Cloud console to upload the built container to Artifact Registry and upload the compiled pipeline to Vertex AI Pipelines would not allow you to deploy new pipelines into production quickly and easily, and could increase the manual effort and errors. You would need to write code, create and run the CI/CD pipeline, use the Google Cloud console to upload the built container to Artifact Registry, and use the Google Cloud console to upload the compiled pipeline to Vertex AI Pipelines. Moreover, this option would not use a pre-production environment to test and validate your pipeline before deploying it to production, which could increase the chance that the new pipeline implementations will break in production1.

Option B: Setting up a CI/CD pipeline that builds your source code and then deploys built artifacts into a pre-production environment, running unit tests in the pre-production environment, and if the tests are successful, deploying the pipeline to production would not allow you to test and validate your pipeline before deploying it to production, and could cause errors or poor performance. A unit test is a type of test that can verify the functionality and correctness of a small and isolated unit of code, such as a function or a class. A unit test can help you debug and improve your code quality, and catch any bugs or issues that may affect the code logic or output. However, setting up a CI/CD pipeline that builds your source code and then deploys built artifacts into a pre-production environment, running unit tests in the pre-production environment, and if the tests are successful, deploying the pipeline to production would not allow you to test and validate your pipeline before deploying it to production, and could cause errors or poor performance. You would need to write code, create and run the CI/CD pipeline, deploy the built artifacts to the pre-production environment, run the unit tests in the pre-production environment, and deploy the pipeline to production. Moreover, this option would not run the pipeline in the pre-production environment, which could prevent you from testing and validating the pipeline functionality and compatibility, and catching any bugs or issues that may affect the pipeline workflow or output1.

Option D: Setting up a CI/CD pipeline that builds and tests your source code and then deploys built artifacts into a pre-production environment, after a successful pipeline run in the pre-production environment, rebuilding the source code, and deploying the artifacts to production would not allow you to deploy new pipelines into production quickly and easily, and could increase the complexity and cost of the pipeline development and deployment. Rebuilding the source code is a process that can recompile and repackage the source code into executable artifacts, such as container images and pipeline files. Rebuilding the source code can help you incorporate any changes or updates that may have occurred in the source code, and ensure that the artifacts are consistent and up-to-date. However, setting up a CI/CD pipeline that builds and tests your source code and then deploys built artifacts into a pre-production environment, after a successful pipeline run in the pre-production environment, rebuilding the source code, and deploying the artifacts to production would not allow you to deploy new pipelines into production quickly and easily, and could increase the complexity and cost of the pipeline development and deployment. You would need to write code, create and run the CI/CD pipeline, deploy the built artifacts to the pre-production environment, run the pipeline in the pre-production environment, rebuild the source code, and deploy the artifacts to production. Moreover, this option would increase the pipeline development and deployment time, as rebuilding the source code can be a time-consuming and resource-intensive process1.

References:

Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer, Course 3: Production ML Systems, Week 3: MLOps

Google Cloud Professional Machine Learning Engineer Exam Guide, Section 3: Scaling ML models in production, 3.2 Automating ML workflows

Official Google Cloud Certified Professional Machine Learning Engineer Study Guide, Chapter 6: Production ML Systems, Section 6.4: Automating ML Workflows

Cloud Build

Vertex AI Pipelines

Artifact Registry

Pre-production environment

According to the official exam guide1, one of the skills assessed in the exam is to “configure and optimize model monitoring jobs”. The Vertex AI Model Monitoring documentation states that “to reduce the cost of model monitoring, you can configure the sample rate of the requests that are logged and analyzed by model monitoring”. Therefore, decreasing the sample_rate parameter in the Randomsampleconfig of the monitoring job would reduce the model monitoring cost while continuing to quickly detect drift. The other options are not relevant or optimal for this scenario. References:

Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate

Professional ML Engineer Exam Guide

Google Professional Machine Learning Certification Exam 2023

Latest Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer Actual Free Exam Questions

[Vertex AI Model Monitoring]