Tutorial: Designer - deploy a machine learning model

Use the designer to deploy a machine learning model to predict the price of cars. This tutorial is part two of a two-part series.

In part one of the tutorial you trained a linear regression model on car prices. In part two, you deploy the model to give others a chance to use it. In this tutorial, you:

Prerequisites

Complete part one of the tutorial to learn how to train and score a machine learning model in the designer.

Create a real-time inference pipeline

To deploy your pipeline, you must first convert the training pipeline into a real-time inference pipeline. This process removes training components and adds web service inputs and outputs to handle requests.

Create a real-time inference pipeline

1. On pipeline job detail page, above the pipeline canvas, select Create inference pipeline > Real-time inference pipeline.

   

   Your new pipeline will now look like this:

   

   When you select Create inference pipeline, several things happen:

   • The trained model is stored as a Dataset component in the component palette. You can find it under My Datasets.
   • Training components like Train Model and Split Data are removed.
   • The saved trained model is added back into the pipeline.
   • Web Service Input and Web Service Output components are added. These components show where user data enters the pipeline and where data is returned.

   Note

   By default, the Web Service Input will expect the same data schema as the component output data which connects to the same downstream port as it. In this sample, Web Service Input and Automobile price data (Raw) connect to the same downstream component, hence Web Service Input expect the same data schema as Automobile price data (Raw) and target variable column price is included in the schema. However, usually When you score the data, you won't know the target variable values. For such case, you can remove the target variable column in the inference pipeline using Select Columns in Dataset component. Make sure that the output of Select Columns in Dataset removing target variable column is connected to the same port as the output of the Web Service Input component.

2. Select Submit, and use the same compute target and experiment that you used in part one.

   If this is the first job, it may take up to 20 minutes for your pipeline to finish running. The default compute settings have a minimum node size of 0, which means that the designer must allocate resources after being idle. Repeated pipeline jobs will take less time since the compute resources are already allocated. Additionally, the designer uses cached results for each component to further improve efficiency.

3. Go to the real-time inference pipeline job detail by selecting Job detail link in the left pane.

4. Select Deploy in the job detail page.

   

Create an inferencing cluster

In the dialog box that appears, you can select from any existing Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters to deploy your model to. If you don't have an AKS cluster, use the following steps to create one.

1. Select Compute in the dialog box that appears to go to the Compute page.

2. On the navigation ribbon, select Inference Clusters > + New.

   

3. In the inference cluster pane, configure a new Kubernetes Service.

4. Enter aks-compute for the Compute name.

5. Select a nearby region that's available for the Region.

6. Select Create.

   Note

   It takes approximately 15 minutes to create a new AKS service. You can check the provisioning state on the Inference Clusters page.

Deploy the real-time endpoint

After your AKS service has finished provisioning, return to the real-time inferencing pipeline to complete deployment.

1. Select Deploy above the canvas.

2. Select Deploy new real-time endpoint.

3. Select the AKS cluster you created.

   

   You can also change Advanced setting for your real-time endpoint.

   Advanced setting	Description
   Enable Application Insights diagnostics and data collection	Whether to enable Azure Application Insights to collect data from the deployed endpoints. By default: false.
   Scoring timeout	A timeout in milliseconds to enforce for scoring calls to the web service. By default: 60000.
   Auto scale enabled	Whether to enable autoscaling for the web service. By default: true.
   Min replicas	The minimum number of containers to use when autoscaling this web service. By default: 1.
   Max replicas	The maximum number of containers to use when autoscaling this web service. By default: 10.
   Target utilization	The target utilization (in percent out of 100) that the autoscaler should attempt to maintain for this web service. By default: 70.
   Refresh period	How often (in seconds) the autoscaler attempts to scale this web service. By default: 1.
   CPU reserve capacity	The number of CPU cores to allocate for this web service. By default: 0.1.
   Memory reserve capacity	The amount of memory (in GB) to allocate for this web service. By default: 0.5.

4. Select Deploy.

   A success notification from the notification center appears after deployment finishes. It might take a few minutes.

   

Test the real-time endpoint

After deployment finishes, you can view your real-time endpoint by going to the Endpoints page.

1. On the Endpoints page, select the endpoint you deployed.

   In the Details tab, you can see more information such as the REST URI, Swagger definition, status, and tags.

   In the Consume tab, you can find sample consumption code, security keys, and set authentication methods.

   In the Deployment logs tab, you can find the detailed deployment logs of your real-time endpoint.

2. To test your endpoint, go to the Test tab. From here, you can enter test data and select Test verify the output of your endpoint.

Update the real-time endpoint

You can update the online endpoint with new model trained in the designer. On the online endpoint detail page, find your previous training pipeline job and inference pipeline job.

1. You can directly find and modify your training pipeline draft in the designer homepage.

   Or you can open the training pipeline job link and then clone it into a new pipeline draft to continue editing.

   

2. After you submit the modified training pipeline, go to the job detail page.

3. When the job completes, right click Train Model and select Register data.

   

   Input name and select File type.

   

4. After the dataset registers successfully, open your inference pipeline draft, or clone the previous inference pipeline job into a new draft. In the inference pipeline draft, replace the previous trained model shown as MD-XXXX node connected to the Score Model component with the newly registered dataset.

   

5. If you need to update the data preprocessing part in your training pipeline, and would like to update that into the inference pipeline, the processing is similar as steps above.

   You just need to register the transformation output of the transformation component as dataset.

   Then manually replace the TD- component in inference pipeline with the registered dataset.

   

6. After modifying your inference pipeline with the newly trained model or transformation, submit it. When the job is completed, deploy it to the existing online endpoint deployed previously.

   

Limitations

• Due to datastore access limitation, if your inference pipeline contains Import Data or Export Data component, they'll be auto-removed when deploy to real-time endpoint.

• If you have datasets in the real-time inference pipeline and want to deploy it to real-time endpoint, currently this flow only supports datasets registered from Blob datastore. If you want to use datasets from other type datastores, you can use Select Column to connect with your initial dataset with settings of selecting all columns, register the outputs of Select Column as File dataset and then replace the initial dataset in the real-time inference pipeline with this newly registered dataset.

• If your inference graph contains "Enter Data Manually" component which is not connected to the same port as “Web service Input” component, the "Enter Data Manually" component will not be executed during HTTP call processing. A workaround is to register the outputs of that "Enter Data Manually" component as dataset, then in the inference pipeline draft, replace the "Enter Data Manually" component with the registered dataset.

  

Clean up resources

Delete everything

If you don't plan to use anything that you created, delete the entire resource group so you don't incur any charges.

1. In the Azure portal, select Resource groups on the left side of the window.

   

2. In the list, select the resource group that you created.

3. Select Delete resource group.

Deleting the resource group also deletes all resources that you created in the designer.

Delete individual assets

In the designer where you created your experiment, delete individual assets by selecting them and then selecting the Delete button.

The compute target that you created here automatically autoscales to zero nodes when it's not being used. This action is taken to minimize charges. If you want to delete the compute target, take these steps:

You can unregister datasets from your workspace by selecting each dataset and selecting Unregister.

To delete a dataset, go to the storage account by using the Azure portal or Azure Storage Explorer and manually delete those assets.

Next steps

In this tutorial, you learned the key steps in how to create, deploy, and consume a machine learning model in the designer. To learn more about how you can use the designer see the following links:

• Designer samples: Learn how to use the designer to solve other types of problems.
• Use Azure Machine Learning studio in an Azure virtual network.