Lambda Labs GPU Cloud
Comprehensive guide to running ML workloads on Lambda Labs GPU cloud with on-demand instances and 1-Click Clusters.
When to use Lambda Labs
Use Lambda Labs when:
Need dedicated GPU instances with full SSH access Running long training jobs (hours to days) Want simple pricing with no egress fees Need persistent storage across sessions Require high-performance multi-node clusters (16-512 GPUs) Want pre-installed ML stack (Lambda Stack with PyTorch, CUDA, NCCL)
Key features:
GPU variety: B200, H100, GH200, A100, A10, A6000, V100 Lambda Stack: Pre-installed PyTorch, TensorFlow, CUDA, cuDNN, NCCL Persistent filesystems: Keep data across instance restarts 1-Click Clusters: 16-512 GPU Slurm clusters with InfiniBand Simple pricing: Pay-per-minute, no egress fees Global regions: 12+ regions worldwide
Use alternatives instead:
Modal: For serverless, auto-scaling workloads SkyPilot: For multi-cloud orchestration and cost optimization RunPod: For cheaper spot instances and serverless endpoints Vast.ai: For GPU marketplace with lowest prices Quick start Account setup Create account at https://lambda.ai Add payment method Generate API key from dashboard Add SSH key (required before launching instances) Launch via console Go to https://cloud.lambda.ai/instances Click "Launch instance" Select GPU type and region Choose SSH key Optionally attach filesystem Launch and wait 3-15 minutes Connect via SSH
Get instance IP from console
ssh ubuntu@
Or with specific key
ssh -i ~/.ssh/lambda_key ubuntu@
GPU instances Available GPUs GPU VRAM Price/GPU/hr Best For B200 SXM6 180 GB $4.99 Largest models, fastest training H100 SXM 80 GB $2.99-3.29 Large model training H100 PCIe 80 GB $2.49 Cost-effective H100 GH200 96 GB $1.49 Single-GPU large models A100 80GB 80 GB $1.79 Production training A100 40GB 40 GB $1.29 Standard training A10 24 GB $0.75 Inference, fine-tuning A6000 48 GB $0.80 Good VRAM/price ratio V100 16 GB $0.55 Budget training Instance configurations 8x GPU: Best for distributed training (DDP, FSDP) 4x GPU: Large models, multi-GPU training 2x GPU: Medium workloads 1x GPU: Fine-tuning, inference, development
Launch times Single-GPU: 3-5 minutes Multi-GPU: 10-15 minutes Lambda Stack
All instances come with Lambda Stack pre-installed:
Included software
- Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
- NVIDIA drivers (latest)
- CUDA 12.x
- cuDNN 8.x
- NCCL (for multi-GPU)
- PyTorch (latest)
- TensorFlow (latest)
- JAX
- JupyterLab
Verify installation
Check GPU
nvidia-smi
Check PyTorch
python -c "import torch; print(torch.cuda.is_available())"
Check CUDA version
nvcc --version
Python API Installation pip install lambda-cloud-client
Authentication import os import lambda_cloud_client
Configure with API key
configuration = lambda_cloud_client.Configuration( host="https://cloud.lambdalabs.com/api/v1", access_token=os.environ["LAMBDA_API_KEY"] )
List available instances with lambda_cloud_client.ApiClient(configuration) as api_client: api = lambda_cloud_client.DefaultApi(api_client)
# Get available instance types
types = api.instance_types()
for name, info in types.data.items():
print(f"{name}: {info.instance_type.description}")
Launch instance from lambda_cloud_client.models import LaunchInstanceRequest
request = LaunchInstanceRequest( region_name="us-west-1", instance_type_name="gpu_1x_h100_sxm5", ssh_key_names=["my-ssh-key"], file_system_names=["my-filesystem"], # Optional name="training-job" )
response = api.launch_instance(request) instance_id = response.data.instance_ids[0] print(f"Launched: {instance_id}")
List running instances instances = api.list_instances() for instance in instances.data: print(f"{instance.name}: {instance.ip} ({instance.status})")
Terminate instance from lambda_cloud_client.models import TerminateInstanceRequest
request = TerminateInstanceRequest( instance_ids=[instance_id] ) api.terminate_instance(request)
SSH key management from lambda_cloud_client.models import AddSshKeyRequest
Add SSH key
request = AddSshKeyRequest( name="my-key", public_key="ssh-rsa AAAA..." ) api.add_ssh_key(request)
List keys
keys = api.list_ssh_keys()
Delete key
api.delete_ssh_key(key_id)
CLI with curl List instance types curl -u $LAMBDA_API_KEY: \ https://cloud.lambdalabs.com/api/v1/instance-types | jq
Launch instance curl -u $LAMBDA_API_KEY: \ -X POST https://cloud.lambdalabs.com/api/v1/instance-operations/launch \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{ "region_name": "us-west-1", "instance_type_name": "gpu_1x_h100_sxm5", "ssh_key_names": ["my-key"] }' | jq
Terminate instance
curl -u $LAMBDA_API_KEY: \
-X POST https://cloud.lambdalabs.com/api/v1/instance-operations/terminate \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"instance_ids": ["
Persistent storage Filesystems
Filesystems persist data across instance restarts:
Mount location
/lambda/nfs/
Example: save checkpoints
python train.py --checkpoint-dir /lambda/nfs/my-storage/checkpoints
Create filesystem Go to Storage in Lambda console Click "Create filesystem" Select region (must match instance region) Name and create Attach to instance
Filesystems must be attached at instance launch time:
Via console: Select filesystem when launching Via API: Include file_system_names in launch request Best practices
Store on filesystem (persists)
/lambda/nfs/storage/ ├── datasets/ ├── checkpoints/ ├── models/ └── outputs/
Local SSD (faster, ephemeral)
/home/ubuntu/ └── working/ # Temporary files
SSH configuration Add SSH key
Generate key locally
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ~/.ssh/lambda_key
Add public key to Lambda console
Or via API
Multiple keys
On instance, add more keys
echo 'ssh-rsa AAAA...' >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
Import from GitHub
On instance
ssh-import-id gh:username
SSH tunneling
Forward Jupyter
ssh -L 8888:localhost:8888 ubuntu@
Forward TensorBoard
ssh -L 6006:localhost:6006 ubuntu@
Multiple ports
ssh -L 8888:localhost:8888 -L 6006:localhost:6006 ubuntu@
JupyterLab Launch from console Go to Instances page Click "Launch" in Cloud IDE column JupyterLab opens in browser Manual access
On instance
jupyter lab --ip=0.0.0.0 --port=8888
From local machine with tunnel
ssh -L 8888:localhost:8888 ubuntu@
Open http://localhost:8888
Training workflows Single-GPU training
SSH to instance
ssh ubuntu@
Clone repo
git clone https://github.com/user/project cd project
Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt
Train
python train.py --epochs 100 --checkpoint-dir /lambda/nfs/storage/checkpoints
Multi-GPU training (single node)
train_ddp.py
import torch import torch.distributed as dist from torch.nn.parallel import DistributedDataParallel as DDP
def main(): dist.init_process_group("nccl") rank = dist.get_rank() device = rank % torch.cuda.device_count()
model = MyModel().to(device)
model = DDP(model, device_ids=[device])
# Training loop...
if name == "main": main()
Launch with torchrun (8 GPUs)
torchrun --nproc_per_node=8 train_ddp.py
Checkpoint to filesystem import os
checkpoint_dir = "/lambda/nfs/my-storage/checkpoints" os.makedirs(checkpoint_dir, exist_ok=True)
Save checkpoint
torch.save({ 'epoch': epoch, 'model_state_dict': model.state_dict(), 'optimizer_state_dict': optimizer.state_dict(), 'loss': loss, }, f"{checkpoint_dir}/checkpoint_{epoch}.pt")
1-Click Clusters Overview
High-performance Slurm clusters with:
16-512 NVIDIA H100 or B200 GPUs NVIDIA Quantum-2 400 Gb/s InfiniBand GPUDirect RDMA at 3200 Gb/s Pre-installed distributed ML stack Included software Ubuntu 22.04 LTS + Lambda Stack NCCL, Open MPI PyTorch with DDP and FSDP TensorFlow OFED drivers Storage 24 TB NVMe per compute node (ephemeral) Lambda filesystems for persistent data Multi-node training
On Slurm cluster
srun --nodes=4 --ntasks-per-node=8 --gpus-per-node=8 \ torchrun --nnodes=4 --nproc_per_node=8 \ --rdzv_backend=c10d --rdzv_endpoint=$MASTER_ADDR:29500 \ train.py
Networking Bandwidth Inter-instance (same region): up to 200 Gbps Internet outbound: 20 Gbps max Firewall Default: Only port 22 (SSH) open Configure additional ports in Lambda console ICMP traffic allowed by default Private IPs
Find private IP
ip addr show | grep 'inet '
Common workflows Workflow 1: Fine-tuning LLM
1. Launch 8x H100 instance with filesystem
2. SSH and setup
ssh ubuntu@
3. Download model to filesystem
python -c " from transformers import AutoModelForCausalLM model = AutoModelForCausalLM.from_pretrained('meta-llama/Llama-2-7b-hf') model.save_pretrained('/lambda/nfs/storage/models/llama-2-7b') "
4. Fine-tune with checkpoints on filesystem
accelerate launch --num_processes 8 train.py \ --model_path /lambda/nfs/storage/models/llama-2-7b \ --output_dir /lambda/nfs/storage/outputs \ --checkpoint_dir /lambda/nfs/storage/checkpoints
Workflow 2: Batch inference
1. Launch A10 instance (cost-effective for inference)
2. Run inference
python inference.py \ --model /lambda/nfs/storage/models/fine-tuned \ --input /lambda/nfs/storage/data/inputs.jsonl \ --output /lambda/nfs/storage/data/outputs.jsonl
Cost optimization Choose right GPU Task Recommended GPU LLM fine-tuning (7B) A100 40GB LLM fine-tuning (70B) 8x H100 Inference A10, A6000 Development V100, A10 Maximum performance B200 Reduce costs Use filesystems: Avoid re-downloading data Checkpoint frequently: Resume interrupted training Right-size: Don't over-provision GPUs Terminate idle: No auto-stop, manually terminate Monitor usage Dashboard shows real-time GPU utilization API for programmatic monitoring Common issues Issue Solution Instance won't launch Check region availability, try different GPU SSH connection refused Wait for instance to initialize (3-15 min) Data lost after terminate Use persistent filesystems Slow data transfer Use filesystem in same region GPU not detected Reboot instance, check drivers References Advanced Usage - Multi-node training, API automation Troubleshooting - Common issues and solutions Resources Documentation: https://docs.lambda.ai Console: https://cloud.lambda.ai Pricing: https://lambda.ai/instances Support: https://support.lambdalabs.com Blog: https://lambda.ai/blog