FAQ¶
Usage¶
Can I use Coiled to do machine learning, data science, etc.?
Yes! Coiled builds on the popular PyData ecosystem of tools, and Dask in particular. Refer to the following resources to learn more about what you can do with Dask and Python:
You may also want to check out our YouTube channel for interviews with community members that are using Python at scale.
Does Coiled support Jupyter notebooks?
Yes, you can use Coiled from a Jupyter Notebook on your laptop or in a cloud-hosted environment.
Coiled also supports running hosted, sharable notebooks. Click on the
Notebooks tab in the Coiled app for example notebooks and steps on how
to get started. You may also want to try some of our notebooks at
cloud.coiled.io/examples/notebooks.
Note that today Coiled does not yet persist user state across notebook sessions. Refer to the documentation on Notebooks for more information.
Can I use Coiled from Sagemaker, VS Code, PyCharm, etc.?
Yes, you can use Coiled from anywhere that you can run Python. Coiled is agnostic to any specific user environment, editor, or IDE.
Does Coiled support GPUs?
Yes, however, access to GPU resources is limited during the beta period. Reach out to us at sales@coiled.io if you’re interested in using Coiled with GPUs.
Data¶
How do I access my data from Coiled?
When you run computations on Dask clusters managed by Coiled, you can access many different file formats using the typical approaches used by Dask, Python, and related libraries.
Coiled can provision Dask clusters on different cloud providers. Therefore, large datasets should be stored on the cloud using services such as Amazon S3 to avoid large data transfer costs. Be sure to also consider which region you are running Coiled in compared to which region the data resides in.
Do I need to migrate my data to Coiled?
No, Coiled does not store any of your data. Rather, your data can remain in its current location. Coiled manages computation and helps you load data from your existing data sources, process it, and write results to those same (or other) data sources.
Libraries¶
How do I install libraries on my Coiled clusters?
Coiled helps you manage software environments both on your local machine and
on cloud providers. You can specify custom environments using pip or conda
environment files with the coiled.create_software_environment function
and Coiled will manage building Docker images that can then be used as
software environments in Dask clusters or other jobs on the cloud.
Refer to the documentation on Software Environments for more information.
Why do I need a local software environment?
When performing distributed computations with Dask, you’ll create a
distributed.Client object which connects your local Python process
(e.g., your laptop) to your remote Dask cluster (e.g., running on AWS). Dask
Client s are the user-facing entry point for submitting tasks to a Dask
cluster. When using a Client to submit tasks to your cluster, Dask will
package up and send data, functions, and other Python objects needed for
your computations from your local Python process where your Client is
running to your remote Dask cluster in order for them to be executed.
This means that if you want to run a function on your Dask cluster, for
example NumPy’s numpy.mean() function, then you must have NumPy
installed in your local Python process so Dask can send the numpy.mean
function from your local Dask Client to the workers in your Dask
cluster. For this reason, it’s recommended to have the same
libraries/versions installed on both your local machine and on the remote
workers in your cluster.
Refer to the documentation on Software Environments for more details on how to easily synchronize your local and remote software environments using Coiled.
Why do I get Version Mismatch warnings?
When running cloud computations from your local machine, we need to ensure some level of consistency between your local and remote environments. For example, your Python versions should match, and if you want to use a library like PyTorch or Pandas remotely, then you should probably also install it locally. When Coiled detects a mismatch, it will inform you with a warning.
Matching versions can be challenging if handled manually. Fortunately, Coiled provides functionality to help build and maintain software environments that match across local and remote environments. Refer to the documentation on Installing software environments locally for more information.
Deployment¶
Which cloud providers does Coiled support?
Coiled currently supports running within our managed AWS environment or within your own AWS account. Coiled also supports running on our managed Azure and GCP environments. Refer to the documentation on Backends for more information on backend configuration, supported regions, and GPUs.
Please contact sales@coiled.io if you’re interested in using Coiled with other backends such as your own Azure account, your own GCP account, or Kubernetes.
Can Coiled provision resources in my own cloud account?
Yes! By default, Coiled creates Dask clusters in our managed AWS environment. However, for pricing or security reasons you may prefer to have Coiled provision compute resources within your own AWS account. Refer to the documentation on Backends for more information.
Can I run Coiled on-premises?
If you want run Coiled in your own private cloud account, we currently support that for AWS. Refer to the question “Can Coiled provision resources in my own cloud account?” above.
If you want to run Coiled on your own machines in your own data center, we would love to hear from you. Please contact sales@coiled.io to start a conversation with us.
Availability¶
How much does Coiled cost?
Coiled is currently in beta. During this time Coiled is free for all beta users.
You will not be charged for any of the compute resources you use, however there is a limit of 100 concurrently running cores per user. This policy will change in the future when Coiled is opened up to a broader audience, but until then we are happy to provide beta users cloud computing resources at no cost. Thank you for trying out Coiled!
For more information on pricing, refer to coiled.io/pricing.
How do I invite colleagues, students, etc.?
We’re glad that you’re enjoying Coiled and want to invite colleagues or students. Coiled is currently open access, so your colleagues can join on their own without any additional steps.
If you want to work within a team account with a group of users from your organization, then you can send an e-mail to sales@coiled.io with a team name and we’ll set you up as an administrator for your new team. Refer to the documentation on Teams for more information.
Security¶
Can I use Coiled to read private data on AWS?
Yes. If you create a Coiled cluster from an environment that has AWS credentials defined, then Coiled will generate a secure token from those credentials and forward it to your Dask workers. The Dask workers will have the same rights and permissions that you have by default.
For additional control, Coiled can be deployed within your own AWS account where you can specify and manage IAM roles directly. Refer to the documentation on Security & Privacy for more information.
Are my computations and data secure?
Coiled provides end-to-end network security by the use of both cloud networking policies and with SSL/TLS encryption. Coiled does not persist or store any of your data, data only resides in memory as long as you are performing computations.
For additional control, Coiled can be deployed within your own AWS account where you can specify and manage data access controls directly. Refer to the documentation on Security & Privacy for more information.
Connect with us¶
How can I submit a bug report, feature request, or other question?
First, thank you! Your feedback is highly valuable and will help influence the future of Coiled.
For bug reports, please open an issue on the Coiled issue tracker.
For feature requests or other usability feedback, we’d love to hear from you on our feedback portal!
For other questions, please join our Coiled Community Slack where you can ask questions and interact with our engineers as well as the Coiled community.
How can I keep up with the latest news about Coiled?
To stay up to date with Coiled, you can subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.