PyTorch Multi-node Distributed Training

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A basic example showing how to use Runhouse to Pythonically run a PyTorch distributed training script on a cluster of GPUs. Often distributed training is launched from multiple parallel CLI commands (python -m torch.distributed.launch ...), each spawning separate training processes (ranks). Here, we're creating each process as a separate worker on the cluster, sending our training function into each worker, and calling the replicas concurrently to trigger coordinated multi-node training (torch.distributed.init_process_group causes each to wait for all to connect, and sets up the distributed communication). We're using two single-GPU instances (and therefore two ranks) for simplicity, but we've included the basic logic to handle multi-GPU nodes as well, where you'd add more worker processes per node and set device_ids accordingly.

Despite it being common to use a launcher script to start distributed training, this approach is more flexible and allows for more complex orchestration, such as running multiple training jobs concurrently, handling exceptions, running distributed training alongside other tasks on the same cluster. It's also significantly easier to debug and monitor, as you can see the output of each rank in real-time and get stack traces if a worker fails.

import runhouse as rh
import torch

from torch.nn.parallel import DistributedDataParallel as DDP

Define the PyTorch distributed training logic

This is the function that will be run on each worker. It initializes the distributed training environment, creates a simple model and optimizer, and runs a training loop.

def train_loop(epochs):
    # Initialize the distributed training environment,
    # per https://pytorch.org/docs/stable/distributed.html#initialization
    torch.distributed.init_process_group(backend="nccl")
    rank = torch.distributed.get_rank()
    print(f"Rank {rank} of {torch.distributed.get_world_size()} initialized")

    # Create a simple model and optimizer
    device_id = rank % torch.cuda.device_count()
    model = torch.nn.Linear(10, 1).cuda(device_id)
    model = DDP(model, device_ids=[device_id])
    optimizer = torch.optim.SGD(model.parameters(), lr=0.01)

    # Perform a simple training loop
    for epoch in range(epochs):
        optimizer.zero_grad()
        output = model(torch.randn(10).cuda())
        loss = output.sum()
        loss.backward()
        optimizer.step()

        print(f"Rank {rank}: Epoch {epoch}, Loss {loss.item()}")

    # Clean up the distributed training environment
    torch.distributed.destroy_process_group()

Note

Make sure that your code runs within a if __name__ == "__main__": block, as shown below. Otherwise, the script code will run when Runhouse attempts to run code remotely.

if __name__ == "__main__":
    gpus_per_node = 1
    num_nodes = 2

    cluster = rh.cluster(
        name=f"rh-{num_nodes}x{gpus_per_node}GPU",
        accelerators=f"A10G:{gpus_per_node}",
        num_nodes=num_nodes,
    ).up_if_not()

    remote_train_loop = rh.function(train_loop).to(cluster)

    train_ddp = remote_train_loop.distribute(
        "pytorch",
        num_replicas=num_nodes * gpus_per_node,
        replicas_per_node=gpus_per_node,
    )
    train_ddp(epochs=10)

PyTorch Multi-node Distributed Training
Define the PyTorch distributed training logic