Vast.ai Hello World

Overview

Rent your first GPU instance on Vast.ai, run a PyTorch workload, and destroy the instance when done. Demonstrates the full lifecycle: search offers, create instance, connect via SSH, run a job, and tear down.

Prerequisites

• Completed vastai-install-auth setup
• Vast.ai account with credits ($1+ recommended for testing)
• SSH key uploaded to Vast.ai (cloud.vast.ai > Account > SSH Keys)

Instructions

Step 1: Search for Available GPUs (CLI)

# Find cheap single-GPU offers sorted by price
vastai search offers 'num_gpus=1 gpu_ram>=8 inet_down>100 reliability>0.95' \
  --order 'dph_total' --limit 5

# Output columns: ID, GPU, VRAM, $/hr, DLPerf, Reliability, Location