Getting Started with Katib

This guide shows how to get started with Katib and run a few examples using the command line and the Katib user interface (UI) to perform hyperparameter tuning.

For an overview of the concepts around Katib and hyperparameter tuning, check the introduction to Katib.

Katib setup

Let’s set up and configure Katib on your Kubernetes cluster with Kubeflow.

Installing Katib

You can skip this step if you have already installed Kubeflow. Your Kubeflow deployment includes Katib.

To install Katib as part of Kubeflow, follow the Kubeflow installation guide.

If you want to install Katib separately from Kubeflow, or to get a later version of Katib, you can use various Katib installs. Run the following command to clone Katib repository:

git clone https://github.com/kubeflow/katib
cd katib

You can use one of the following Katib installations.

1. Katib Standalone Installation

   Run the following command to deploy Katib with the main components (katib-controller, katib-ui, katib-mysql, katib-db-manager, and katib-cert-generator):

   make deploy
   

   This installation doesn’t require any additional setup on your Kubernetes cluster.

2. Katib Cert Manager Installation

   Run the following command to deploy Katib with Cert Manager requirement:

   kustomize build manifests/v1beta1/installs/katib-cert-manager | kubectl apply -f -
   

   This installation uses Cert Manager instead of katib-cert-generator to provision Katib webhooks certificates. You have to deploy Cert Manager on your Kubernetes cluster before deploying Katib using this installation.

3. Katib External DB Installation

   Run the following command to deploy Katib with custom Database (DB) backend:

   kustomize build manifests/v1beta1/installs/katib-external-db | kubectl apply -f -
   

   This installation allows to use custom MySQL DB instead of katib-mysql. You have to modify appropriate environment variables for katib-db-manager in the secrets.env to point at your custom MySQL DB. Learn more about katib-db-manager environment variables in this guide.

4. Katib on OpenShift

   Run the following command to deploy Katib on OpenShift v4.4+:

   kustomize build ./manifests/v1beta1/installs/katib-openshift | oc apply -f - -l type!=local
   

   This installation uses OpenShift service controller instead of katib-cert-generator to provision Katib webhooks certificates.

Above installations deploy PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC) for the Katib DB component.

Your Kubernetes cluster must have StorageClass for dynamic volume provisioning. For more information, check the Kubernetes documentation on dynamic provisioning.

If your cluster doesn’t have dynamic volume provisioning, you must manually deploy PersistentVolume (PV) to bind PVC for the Katib DB component.

Accessing the Katib UI

You can use the Katib user interface (UI) to submit experiments and to monitor your results. The Katib home page within Kubeflow looks like this:

If you installed Katib as part of Kubeflow, you can access the Katib UI from the Kubeflow UI:

1. Open the Kubeflow UI. Check the guide to accessing the central dashboard.
2. Click Katib in the left-hand menu.

Alternatively, you can set port-forwarding for the Katib UI service:

kubectl port-forward svc/katib-ui -n kubeflow 8080:80

Then you can access the Katib UI at this URL:

http://localhost:8080/katib/

Check this guide if you want to contribute to Katib UI.

The new Katib UI

During Kubeflow 1.3 we have worked on a new iteration of the UI, which is rewritten in Angular and is utilizing the common code of the other Kubeflow dashboards. While this UI is not yet on par with the current default one, we are actively working to get it up to speed and provide all the existing functionalities.

The users are currently able to list, delete and create Katib Experiments in their cluster via this new UI as well as inspect the owned Trials. One important missing functionalities are the ability to edit the Trial Template ConfigMaps and view neural architecture search Experiments.

While this UI is not ready to replace the current one we would like to encourage users to also give it a try and provide us with feedback.

To try it out you should update the Katib UI image newName with the new registry docker.io/kubeflowkatib/katib-new-ui in the Kustomize manifests.

Examples

This section introduces some examples that you can run to try Katib.

Example using random algorithm

You can create an experiment for Katib by defining the experiment in a YAML configuration file. The YAML file defines the configurations for the experiment, including the hyperparameter feasible space, optimization parameter, optimization goal, suggestion algorithm, and so on.

This example uses the YAML file for the random algorithm example.

The random algorithm example uses an MXNet neural network to train an image classification model using the MNIST dataset. You can check training container source code here. The experiment runs twelve training jobs with various hyperparameters and saves the results.

If you installed Katib as part of Kubeflow, you can’t run experiments in the Kubeflow namespace. Run the following commands to change namespace and launch an experiment using the random algorithm example:

1. Download the example:

   curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubeflow/katib/master/examples/v1beta1/random-example.yaml --output random-example.yaml
   

2. Edit random-example.yaml and change the following line to use your Kubeflow user profile namespace:

   Namespace: kubeflow
   

3. (Optional) Note: Katib’s experiments don’t work with Istio sidecar injection. If you are using Kubeflow with Istio, you have to disable sidecar injection. To do that, specify this annotation: sidecar.istio.io/inject: "false" in your experiment’s trial template.

   For the provided random example with Kubernetes Job trial template, annotation should be under .trialSpec.spec.template.metadata.annotations. For the Kubeflow TFJob or other training operators check here how to set the annotation.

4. Deploy the example:

   kubectl apply -f random-example.yaml
   

This example embeds the hyperparameters as arguments. You can embed hyperparameters in another way (for example, using environment variables) by using the template defined in the trialTemplate.trialSpec section of the YAML file. The template uses the unstructured format and substitutes parameters from the trialTemplate.trialParameters. Follow the trial template guide to know more about it.

This example randomly generates the following hyperparameters:

• --lr: Learning rate. Type: double.
• --num-layers: Number of layers in the neural network. Type: integer.
• --optimizer: Optimization method to change the neural network attributes. Type: categorical.

Check the experiment status:

kubectl -n <YOUR_USER_PROFILE_NAMESPACE> get experiment random-example -o yaml

The output of the above command should look similar to this:

apiVersion: kubeflow.org/v1beta1
kind: Experiment
metadata:
  creationTimestamp: "2020-10-23T21:27:53Z"
  finalizers:
    - update-prometheus-metrics
  generation: 1
  name: random-example
  namespace: "<YOUR_USER_PROFILE_NAMESPACE>"
  resourceVersion: "147081981"
  selfLink: /apis/kubeflow.org/v1beta1/namespaces/<YOUR_USER_PROFILE_NAMESPACE>/experiments/random-example
  uid: fb3776e8-0f83-4783-88b6-80d06867ca0b
spec:
  algorithm:
    algorithmName: random
  maxFailedTrialCount: 3
  maxTrialCount: 12
  metricsCollectorSpec:
    collector:
      kind: StdOut
  objective:
    additionalMetricNames:
      - Train-accuracy
    goal: 0.99
    metricStrategies:
      - name: Validation-accuracy
        value: max
      - name: Train-accuracy
        value: max
    objectiveMetricName: Validation-accuracy
    type: maximize
  parallelTrialCount: 3
  parameters:
    - feasibleSpace:
        max: "0.03"
        min: "0.01"
      name: lr
      parameterType: double
    - feasibleSpace:
        max: "5"
        min: "2"
      name: num-layers
      parameterType: int
    - feasibleSpace:
        list:
          - sgd
          - adam
          - ftrl
      name: optimizer
      parameterType: categorical
  resumePolicy: LongRunning
  trialTemplate:
    failureCondition: status.conditions.#(type=="Failed")#|#(status=="True")#
    primaryContainerName: training-container
    successCondition: status.conditions.#(type=="Complete")#|#(status=="True")#
    trialParameters:
      - description: Learning rate for the training model
        name: learningRate
        reference: lr
      - description: Number of training model layers
        name: numberLayers
        reference: num-layers
      - description: Training model optimizer (sdg, adam or ftrl)
        name: optimizer
        reference: optimizer
    trialSpec:
      apiVersion: batch/v1
      kind: Job
      spec:
        template:
          metadata:
            annotations:
              sidecar.istio.io/inject: "false"
          spec:
            containers:
              - command:
                  - python3
                  - /opt/mxnet-mnist/mnist.py
                  - --batch-size=64
                  - --lr=${trialParameters.learningRate}
                  - --num-layers=${trialParameters.numberLayers}
                  - --optimizer=${trialParameters.optimizer}
                image: docker.io/kubeflowkatib/mxnet-mnist:v1beta1-e294a90
                name: training-container
            restartPolicy: Never
status:
  conditions:
    - lastTransitionTime: "2020-10-23T21:27:53Z"
      lastUpdateTime: "2020-10-23T21:27:53Z"
      message: Experiment is created
      reason: ExperimentCreated
      status: "True"
      type: Created
    - lastTransitionTime: "2020-10-23T21:28:13Z"
      lastUpdateTime: "2020-10-23T21:28:13Z"
      message: Experiment is running
      reason: ExperimentRunning
      status: "True"
      type: Running
  currentOptimalTrial:
    bestTrialName: random-example-smpc6ws2
    observation:
      metrics:
        - latest: "0.993170"
          max: "0.993170"
          min: "0.920293"
          name: Train-accuracy
        - latest: "0.978006"
          max: "0.978603"
          min: "0.959295"
          name: Validation-accuracy
    parameterAssignments:
      - name: lr
        value: "0.02889324678979306"
      - name: num-layers
        value: "5"
      - name: optimizer
        value: sgd
  runningTrialList:
    - random-example-26d5wzn2
    - random-example-98fpd29m
    - random-example-x2vjlzzv
  startTime: "2020-10-23T21:27:53Z"
  succeededTrialList:
    - random-example-n9c4j4cv
    - random-example-qfb68jpb
    - random-example-s96tq48v
    - random-example-smpc6ws2
  trials: 7
  trialsRunning: 3
  trialsSucceeded: 4

When the last value in status.conditions.type is Succeeded, the experiment is complete. You can check information about the best trial in status.currentOptimalTrial.

• .currentOptimalTrial.bestTrialName is the trial name.

• .currentOptimalTrial.observation.metrics is the max, min and latest recorded values for objective and additional metrics.

• .currentOptimalTrial.parameterAssignments is the corresponding hyperparameter set.

In addition, status shows the experiment’s trials with their current status.

View the results of the experiment in the Katib UI:

1. Open the Katib UI as described above.

2. Click Hyperparameter Tuning on the Katib home page.

3. Open the Katib menu panel on the left, then open the HP section and click Monitor:

   

4. You should be able to view the list of experiments:

   

5. Click the name of the experiment, random-example.

6. There should be a graph showing the level of validation and train accuracy for various combinations of the hyperparameter values (learning rate, number of layers, and optimizer):

   

7. Below the graph is a list of trials that ran within the experiment:

   

8. You can click on trial name to get metrics for the particular trial:

   

TensorFlow example

If you installed Katib as part of Kubeflow, you can’t run experiments in the Kubeflow namespace. Run the following commands to launch an experiment using the Kubeflow’s TensorFlow training job operator, TFJob:

1. Download tfjob-example.yaml:

   curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubeflow/katib/master/examples/v1beta1/tfjob-example.yaml --output tfjob-example.yaml
   

2. Edit tfjob-example.yaml and change the following line to use your Kubeflow user profile namespace:

   Namespace: kubeflow
   

3. (Optional) Note: Katib’s experiments don’t work with Istio sidecar injection. If you are using Kubeflow with Istio, you have to disable sidecar injection. To do that, specify this annotation: sidecar.istio.io/inject: "false" in your experiment’s trial template. For the provided TFJob example check here how to set the annotation.

4. Deploy the example:

   kubectl apply -f tfjob-example.yaml
   

5. You can check the status of the experiment:

   kubectl -n <YOUR_USER_PROFILE_NAMESPACE> get experiment tfjob-example -o yaml
   

Follow the steps as described for the random algorithm example above to obtain the results of the experiment in the Katib UI.

PyTorch example

If you installed Katib as part of Kubeflow, you can’t run experiments in the Kubeflow namespace. Run the following commands to launch an experiment using Kubeflow’s PyTorch training job operator, PyTorchJob:

1. Download pytorchjob-example.yaml:

   curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubeflow/katib/master/examples/v1beta1/pytorchjob-example.yaml --output pytorchjob-example.yaml
   

2. Edit pytorchjob-example.yaml and change the following line to use your Kubeflow user profile namespace:

   Namespace: kubeflow
   

3. (Optional) Note: Katib’s experiments don’t work with Istio sidecar injection. If you are using Kubeflow with Istio, you have to disable sidecar injection. To do that, specify this annotation: sidecar.istio.io/inject: "false" in your experiment’s trial template. For the provided PyTorchJob example setting the annotation should be similar to TFJob

4. Deploy the example:

   kubectl apply -f pytorchjob-example.yaml
   

5. You can check the status of the experiment:

   kubectl -n <YOUR_USER_PROFILE_NAMESPACE> describe experiment pytorchjob-example
   

Follow the steps as described for the random algorithm example above to get the results of the experiment in the Katib UI.

Cleaning up

To remove Katib from your Kubernetes cluster run:

make undeploy

Next steps

• Learn how to configure and run your Katib experiments.

• Learn to configure your trial templates.

• Check the Katib Configuration (Katib config).

• How to set up environment variables for each Katib component.