Implementing LLMOps with Azure Databricks

Azure Databricks provides a unified platform that streamlines the AI lifecycle, from data preparation to model serving and monitoring, optimizing the performance and efficiency of machine learning systems. It supports the development of generative AI applications, leveraging features like Unity Catalog for data governance, MLflow for model tracking, and Mosaic AI Model Serving for deploying LLMs.

This lab will take approximately 20 minutes to complete.

Before you start

You’ll need an Azure subscription in which you have administrative-level access.

Provision an Azure OpenAI resource

If you don’t already have one, provision an Azure OpenAI resource in your Azure subscription.

  1. Sign into the Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com.
  2. Create an Azure OpenAI resource with the following settings:
    • Subscription: Select an Azure subscription that has been approved for access to the Azure OpenAI service
    • Resource group: Choose or create a resource group
    • Region: Make a random choice from any of the following regions*
      • East US 2
      • North Central US
      • Sweden Central
      • Switzerland West
    • Name: A unique name of your choice
    • Pricing tier: Standard S0

* Azure OpenAI resources are constrained by regional quotas. The listed regions include default quota for the model type(s) used in this exercise. Randomly choosing a region reduces the risk of a single region reaching its quota limit in scenarios where you are sharing a subscription with other users. In the event of a quota limit being reached later in the exercise, there’s a possibility you may need to create another resource in a different region.

  1. Wait for deployment to complete. Then go to the deployed Azure OpenAI resource in the Azure portal.

  2. In the left pane, under Resource Management, select Keys and Endpoint.

  3. Copy the endpoint and one of the available keys as you will use it later in this exercise.

Deploy the required model

Azure provides a web-based portal named Azure AI Studio, that you can use to deploy, manage, and explore models. You’ll start your exploration of Azure OpenAI by using Azure AI Studio to deploy a model.

Note: As you use Azure AI Studio, message boxes suggesting tasks for you to perform may be displayed. You can close these and follow the steps in this exercise.

  1. In the Azure portal, on the Overview page for your Azure OpenAI resource, scroll down to the Get Started section and select the button to go to Azure AI Studio.

  2. In Azure AI Studio, in the pane on the left, select the Deployments page and view your existing model deployments. If you don’t already have one, create a new deployment of the gpt-35-turbo model with the following settings:

    • Deployment name: gpt-35-turbo
    • Model: gpt-35-turbo
    • Model version: Default
    • Deployment type: Standard
    • Tokens per minute rate limit: 5K*
    • Content filter: Default
    • Enable dynamic quota: Disabled

* A rate limit of 5,000 tokens per minute is more than adequate to complete this exercise while leaving capacity for other people using the same subscription.

Provision an Azure Databricks workspace

Tip: If you already have an Azure Databricks workspace, you can skip this procedure and use your existing workspace.

  1. Sign into the Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com.
  2. Create an Azure Databricks resource with the following settings:
    • Subscription: Select the same Azure subscription that you used to create your Azure OpenAI resource
    • Resource group: The same resource group where you created your Azure OpenAI resource
    • Region: The same region where you created your Azure OpenAI resource
    • Name: A unique name of your choice
    • Pricing tier: Premium or Trial
  3. Select Review + create and wait for deployment to complete. Then go to the resource and launch the workspace.

Create a cluster

Azure Databricks is a distributed processing platform that uses Apache Spark clusters to process data in parallel on multiple nodes. Each cluster consists of a driver node to coordinate the work, and worker nodes to perform processing tasks. In this exercise, you’ll create a single-node cluster to minimize the compute resources used in the lab environment (in which resources may be constrained). In a production environment, you’d typically create a cluster with multiple worker nodes.

Tip: If you already have a cluster with a 13.3 LTS ML or higher runtime version in your Azure Databricks workspace, you can use it to complete this exercise and skip this procedure.

  1. In the Azure portal, browse to the resource group where the Azure Databricks workspace was created.
  2. Select your Azure Databricks Service resource.
  3. In the Overview page for your workspace, use the Launch Workspace button to open your Azure Databricks workspace in a new browser tab; signing in if prompted.

Tip: As you use the Databricks Workspace portal, various tips and notifications may be displayed. Dismiss these and follow the instructions provided to complete the tasks in this exercise.

  1. In the sidebar on the left, select the (+) New task, and then select Cluster.
  2. In the New Cluster page, create a new cluster with the following settings:
    • Cluster name: User Name’s cluster (the default cluster name)
    • Policy: Unrestricted
    • Cluster mode: Single Node
    • Access mode: Single user (with your user account selected)
    • Databricks runtime version: Select the ML edition of the latest non-beta version of the runtime (Not a Standard runtime version) that:
      • Does not use a GPU
      • Includes Scala > 2.11
      • Includes Spark > 3.4
    • Use Photon Acceleration: Unselected
    • Node type: Standard_DS3_v2
    • Terminate after 20 minutes of inactivity
  3. Wait for the cluster to be created. It may take a minute or two.

Note: If your cluster fails to start, your subscription may have insufficient quota in the region where your Azure Databricks workspace is provisioned. See CPU core limit prevents cluster creation for details. If this happens, you can try deleting your workspace and creating a new one in a different region.

Install required libraries

  1. In the Databricks workspace, go to the Workspace section.

  2. Select Create and then select Notebook.

  3. Name your notebook and select Python as the language.

  4. In the first code cell, enter and run the following code to install the necessary libraries:

     %pip install azure-ai-openai flask

  5. After the installation is complete, restart the kernel in a new cell:

     %restart_python

Log the LLM using MLflow

  1. In a new cell, run the following code to initialize your Azure OpenAI client:

     from azure.ai.openai import OpenAIClient

 client = OpenAIClient(api_key="<Your_API_Key>")
 model = client.get_model("gpt-3.5-turbo")

  2. In a new cell, run the following code to initialize MLflow tracking:

     import mlflow

 mlflow.set_tracking_uri("databricks")
 mlflow.start_run()

  3. In a new cell, run the following code to log the model:

     mlflow.pyfunc.log_model("model", python_model=model)
 mlflow.end_run()

Deploy the model

  1. Create a new notebook and in its first cell, run the following code to create a REST API for the model:

     from flask import Flask, request, jsonify
 import mlflow.pyfunc

 app = Flask(__name__)

 @app.route('/predict', methods=['POST'])
 def predict():
     data = request.json
     model = mlflow.pyfunc.load_model("model")
     prediction = model.predict(data["input"])
     return jsonify(prediction)

 if __name__ == '__main__':
     app.run(host='0.0.0.0', port=5000)

Monitor the model

  1. In your first notebook, create a new cell and run the following code to enable MLflow autologging:

     mlflow.autolog()

  2. In a new cell, run the following code to track predictions and input data.

     mlflow.log_param("input", data["input"])
 mlflow.log_metric("prediction", prediction)

  3. In a new cell, run the following code to monitor data drift:

     import pandas as pd
 from evidently.dashboard import Dashboard
 from evidently.tabs import DataDriftTab

 report = Dashboard(tabs=[DataDriftTab()])
 report.calculate(reference_data=historical_data, current_data=current_data)
 report.show()

Once you start monitoring the model, you can set up automated retraining pipelines based on data drift detection.

Clean up

When you’re done with your Azure OpenAI resource, remember to delete the deployment or the entire resource in the Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com.

In Azure Databricks portal, on the Compute page, select your cluster and select ■ Terminate to shut it down.

If you’ve finished exploring Azure Databricks, you can delete the resources you’ve created to avoid unnecessary Azure costs and free up capacity in your subscription.