šŸ¤– Serverless Reinforcement Learning

FaaSTrainGym

Train reinforcement learning agents at scale by combining OpenFaaS with OpenAI Gym. Modular, elastic, and cost-efficient training pipelines built from serverless functions.

OpenFaaS OpenAI Gym Kubernetes Python Serverless

Why FaaSTrainGym?

Operationalize RL workloads using a serverless control plane—rapid iteration, elastic scaling, and simpler ops without managing long-lived trainers.

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Elastic Scaling

Burst data collection and evaluation across many function instances during peak demand.

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Modular Pipelines

Compose training stages—env step, rollout, reward calc, policy update—into functions.

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Cost Efficiency

Pay for compute only when work runs; scale-to-zero outside training bursts.

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Portable + Observable

Kubernetes-native functions with metrics and logs through the OpenFaaS stack.

Architecture

A serverless MAPE-inspired loop for RL: Measure rollouts, Analyze rewards, Plan updates, Execute policy changes—implemented via OpenFaaS functions.

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Control Plane

Orchestrate pipelines via Gateway; queue rollouts; fan-out invocations; collect metrics.

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Env Workers

Gym episodes/steps executed in parallel stateless workers; artifacts stored externally.

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State Stores

Persist replay buffers, model checkpoints, and episode summaries in S3/DB.

Typical Functions

  • • rollout-collector: parallel env steps producing trajectories
  • • reward-aggregator: compute returns/GAE
  • • policy-evaluator: off/on-policy eval
  • • policy-updater: gradient update, checkpoint

Ops Considerations

  • • Use async queueing for bursty rollouts
  • • Externalize state: S3/MinIO + Redis/DB
  • • Tune memory/timeouts to model size
  • • Enable traces/metrics for bottlenecks

Ideal Use Cases

Workloads benefit most when data collection and evaluation dominate compute and parallelism matters.

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Massive Rollouts

Scale out environment interaction across hundreds of short-lived workers.

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Algorithm A/B

Spin up competing configs/policies as independent function graphs.

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MLOps Integration

Plug into CI/CD, store artifacts centrally, and drive experiments by events.

Opportunities

  • • Elastic parallel rollouts can cut wall-clock training time.
  • • Function boundaries enforce clean modularity and reuse.
  • • Pay-as-you-go fits intermittent training bursts.
  • • Kubernetes-native observability simplifies ops at scale.

Challenges & Mitigations

  • • Cold starts/latency: keep minimal warm pools; bundle deps.
  • • Statelessness: externalize replay buffers/checkpoints (S3/DB).
  • • Time/memory limits: route heavy updates to GPU nodes/batch jobs.
  • • Debugging distributed runs: centralize logs, traces, and metrics.

Getting Started

  1. Deploy OpenFaaS on Kubernetes and ensure CLI access.
  2. Clone repo and build functions: github.com/SidAg26/FaaSTrainGym.
  3. Configure external storage for trajectories and checkpoints.
  4. Invoke rollout/evaluation functions and monitor via Gateway/Prometheus.

Build RL training pipelines with serverless agility

Explore the code, open an issue, or suggest integrations—FaaSTrainGym is a foundation for scalable RL.

šŸ’» Go to GitHub