Three months into production, our RAG system started failing at 2AM. Not gracefully—complete outages. The problem wasn’t the models or the embeddings. It was the architecture. After rebuilding it twice, here’s what I learned about building RAG systems that actually work in production. Figure 1: Production RAG Architecture Overview The Night Everything Broke It was […]
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LLM Deployment Strategies: From Model Optimization to Production Scaling
Introduction: Deploying LLMs to production is fundamentally different from deploying traditional ML models. The models are massive, inference is computationally expensive, and latency requirements are stringent. This guide covers the strategies that make LLM deployment practical: model optimization techniques like quantization and pruning, inference serving with batching and caching, containerization with GPU support, auto-scaling based […]
Read more →Running LLMs on Kubernetes: Production Deployment Guide
Deploying LLMs on Kubernetes requires careful planning. After deploying 25+ LLM models on Kubernetes, I’ve learned what works. Here’s the complete guide to running LLMs on Kubernetes in production. Figure 1: Kubernetes LLM Architecture Why Kubernetes for LLMs Kubernetes offers significant advantages for LLM deployment: Scalability: Auto-scale based on demand Resource management: Efficient GPU and […]
Read more →LLM Monitoring and Alerting: Building Observability for Production AI Systems
Introduction: LLM monitoring is essential for maintaining reliable, cost-effective AI applications in production. Unlike traditional software where errors are obvious, LLM failures can be subtle—degraded output quality, increased hallucinations, or slowly rising costs that go unnoticed until the monthly bill arrives. Effective monitoring tracks latency, token usage, error rates, output quality, and cost metrics in […]
Read more →Semantic Kernel: Microsoft’s Enterprise SDK for Building AI-Powered Applications
Introduction: Semantic Kernel is Microsoft’s open-source SDK for integrating Large Language Models into applications. Originally developed to power Microsoft 365 Copilot, it has evolved into a comprehensive framework for building AI-powered applications with enterprise-grade features. Unlike other LLM frameworks that focus primarily on Python, Semantic Kernel provides first-class support for both C# and Python, making […]
Read more →LLM Routing and Model Selection: Optimizing Cost and Quality in Production
Introduction: Not every query needs GPT-4. Routing simple questions to cheaper, faster models while reserving expensive models for complex tasks can cut costs by 70% or more without sacrificing quality. Smart LLM routing is the difference between a $10,000/month AI bill and a $3,000 one. This guide covers implementing intelligent model selection: classifying query complexity, […]
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