[RunPod] Use zone to provision in a specific data center ID

[Kovbo]

RunPod has a data_center_id property that enables deployment in a specific region.

Currently, SkyPilot’s region property uses RunPod’s country_code property, which only allows selecting the deployment country. An additional zone parameter to deploy in a specific data center.

[Michaelvll]

Thanks a lot for adding this @Kovbo! Left a question below. : )

[Michaelvll]

If we are changing this, do we need to update SkyPilot runpod catalog below as well to make the region points to data_center_id?
https://github.com/skypilot-org/skypilot-catalog/blob/master/catalogs/v6/runpod/vms.csv

[Kovbo]

Yes, I think we need to update the region column and list region codes (datacenter codes) instead of countries.

Will contact RunPod to be sure, but I think the price in all regions is the same, as well as the available GPUs.

Should I change it?
Is there a more efficient way to structure the list, rather than displaying 20+ rows with identical information for different regions? For example, could we consolidate them into a single row with the regions comma-separated like here?

Also, the price seems to be outdated.

[Michaelvll]

It would be awesome if you could help update the catalog as well, so that we can get this PR in. Either consolidating them or not should be fine. : )

If you would like conslidate them, you can update the way runpod catalog is loaded here.

Actually, I am wondering whether the data center id is more similar to the availability zone concept in other clouds? Should we keep the region code and add another zone column for the data center id?

For the outdated price, yes, a automatic catalog fetcher should be implemented like the other clouds did, so that the pricing / offerings could be updated automatically: https://github.com/skypilot-org/skypilot/tree/master/sky/clouds/service_catalog/data_fetchers
The fetcher could be done later if it takes much more effort : )

[Kovbo]

Okay, I can update the catalog.

This is a good point about the zone! I don't have a strong opinion, but it may be a good idea to keep the current country as a region to keep it backward compatible and speed up provisioning if no region/zone is specified.

I assume that setting a zone parameter will automatically pass it to config.provider_config['availability_zone'], and we can access it in the run_instances function?

[Michaelvll]

Yes! You may edit the following function to return an additional zone information in the dict with key 'availability_zone':

skypilot/sky/clouds/runpod.py

Lines 186 to 194 in a60fe41

	return {
	'instance_type': instance_type,
	'custom_resources': custom_resources,
	'region': region.name,
	'image_id': image_id,
	'use_spot': use_spot,
	'bid_per_gpu': str(hourly_cost),
	'docker_username_for_runpod': docker_username_for_runpod,
	}

And add the same key to the runpod specific configuration template:

skypilot/sky/templates/runpod-ray.yml.j2

Line 11 in a60fe41

region: "{{region}}"

similar to the other cloud:

skypilot/sky/templates/aws-ray.yml.j2

Line 32 in a60fe41

availability_zone: {{zones}}

After those, in the run_instances function, you will be able to find the config in the config.provider_config['availability_zone'] : )