guides/get-started/quickstart.md

---
title: Quickstart – Hello, world!
description: Launch a barebone GPU-accelerated workload
icon: "circle-play"
version: EN
---

This quickstart deploys a barebone GPU-accelerated workload, a Python container that prints `Hello, world!`. It illustrates the basic components of a single run and how you can deploy one.

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card icon="sparkles" title="Try it on VESSL Hub"  href="https://vessl.ai/hub/create-your-own">
    Try out the Quickstart example with a single click on VESSL Hub.
  </Card>

  <Card icon="github" title="See the final code" href="https://github.com/vessl-ai/hub-model/tree/main/quickstart">
    See the completed YAML file and final code for this example. 
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## What you will do

<img
  style={{ borderRadius: '0.5rem' }}
  src="/images/get-started/quickstart-title.png"
/>

- Launch a GPU-acclerated workload
- Set up a runtime for your model
- Mount a Git codebase
- Run a simple command

## Installation & setup

After creating a free account at [vessl.ai](https://vessl.ai), install our Python package and get an API authentication. Set your primary Organization and Project for your account and let's get going.

```bash
pip install --upgrade vessl
vessl configure
```

## Writing the YAML

Launching a workload on VESSL AI begins with writing a YAML file. Our quickstart YAML is in four parts:

- Compute resource -- typically in terms of GPUs -- this is defined under `resources`
- Runtime environment that points to a Docker Image -- this is defined under `image`
- Input & output for code, dataset, and others defined under `import` & `export`
- Run commands executed inside the workload as defined under `run`

Let's start by creating `quickstart.yml` and define the key-value pairs one by one.

<Steps titleSize="h3">
  <Step title="Spin up a compute instance">
    `resources` defines the hardware specs you will use for your run. Here's an example that uses our managed cloud to launch an L4 instance. 
    
    You can see the full list of compute options and their string values for `preset` under [Resources](/resources/price). Later, you will be able to add and launch workloads on your private cloud or on-premise clusters simply by changing the value for `cluster`. 

    ```yaml
    resources:
      cluster: vessl-gcp-oregon
      preset: gpu-l4-small
    ```
  </Step>

  <Step title="Configure a runtime environment">
    VESSL AI uses Docker images to define a runtime. We provide a set of base images as a starting point but you can also bring your own custom Docker images by referencing hosted images on Docker Hub or Red Hat Quay.
    
    You can find the full list of Images and the dependencies for the latest build [here](https://quay.io/repository/vessl-ai/kernels?tab=tags&tag=py39-202310120824). Here, we'll use the latest go-to PyTorch container from NVIDIA NGC. 

    ```yaml
    resources:
      cluster: vessl-gcp-oregon
      preset: gpu-l4-small
    image: quay.io/vessl-ai/torch:2.1.0-cuda12.2-r3
    ```
  </Step>

  <Step title="Mount a GitHub repository">
    Under `import`, you can mount models, codebases, and datasets from sources like GitHub, Hugging Face, Amazon S3, and more. 

    In this example, we are mounting a GitHub repo to `/code/` folder in our container. You can switch to different versions of code by changing `ref` to specific branches like `dev`. 

    ```yaml
    resources:
      cluster: vessl-gcp-oregon
      preset: gpu-l4-small
    image: quay.io/vessl-ai/torch:2.1.0-cuda12.2-r3
    import:
      /code/:
        git:
          url: https://github.com/vessl-ai/hub-model
          ref: main
    ```
  </Step>

  <Step title="Write a run command">
    Now that we defined the specifications of the compute resource and the runtime environment for our workload, let's run [`main.py`](https://github.com/vessl-ai/hub-model/blob/main/quickstart/main.py). 

    We can do this by defining `command` under `run` and specifying the working directory `workdir`.

    ```yaml
    resources:
      cluster: vessl-gcp-oregon
      preset: gpu-l4-small
    image: quay.io/vessl-ai/torch:2.1.0-cuda12.2-r3
    import:
      /code/:
        git: 
          url: https://github.com/vessl-ai/hub-model
          ref: main
    run:
      - command: |
          python main.py
        workdir: /code/quickstart
    ```
  </Step>

  <Step title="Add metadata">
    Finally, let's polish up by giving our Run a name and description. Here's the completed `.yml`:

    ```yaml
    name: Quickstart
    description: A barebone GPU-accelerated workload
    resources:
      cluster: vessl-gcp-oregon
      preset: gpu-l4-small
    image: quay.io/vessl-ai/torch:2.1.0-cuda12.2-r3
    import:
      /code/:
        git: 
          url: https://github.com/vessl-ai/hub-model
          ref: main
    run:
      - command: |
          python main.py
        workdir: /code/quickstart
    ```
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Running the workload

Now that we have a completed YAML, we can run the workload with `vessl run`.

```
vessl run create -f quickstart.yml
```

<img
  style={{ borderRadius: '0.5rem' }}
  src="/images/get-started/quickstart-run.png"
/>

Running the command will verify your YAML and show you the current status of the workload. Click the output link in your terminal to see full details and a realtime logs of the Run on the web, including the result of the run command. 

<img
  style={{ borderRadius: '0.5rem' }}
  src="/images/get-started/quickstart-result.jpeg"
/>

## Behind the scenes

When you `vessl run`, VESSL AI performs the following as defined in `quickstart.yml`:

1. Launch an empty Python container on the cloud with 1 NVIDIA L4 Tensor Core GPU.
2. Configure runtime with CUDA compute-capable PyTorch 22.09.
3. Mount a GitHub repo and set the working directory. 
3. Execute `main.py` and print `Hello, world!`.

## Using our web interface

You can repeat the same process on the web. Head over to your [Organization](https://vessl.ai), select a project, and create a New run. 

<iframe 
  src="https://scribehow.com/embed/Quickstart__Hello_world__BzwSynUuQI-0R3mMGwJzHw?skipIntro=true&removeLogo=true" 
  width="100%" height="640" allowfullscreen frameborder="0"
  style={{ borderRadius: '0.5rem' }} >
</iframe>

## What's next?

Now that you've run a barebone workload, continue with our guide to launch a Jupyter server and host a web app.

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="GPU-accelerated notebook" href="get-started/gpu-notebook">
    Launch a Jupyter Notebook server with an SSH connection
  </Card>

  <Card title="SSD-1B Playground" href="get-started/stable-diffusion">
    Launch an interactive web application for Stable Diffusion
  </Card>
</CardGroup>