CUDO's Managed Service for Large GPU Cluster Deployment

Background

CUDO partnered with a leading service provider in the AI sector to deliver a managed service for a large GPU cluster deployment in many Datacentre locations around the globe. The customer faced several challenges in scaling their GPU infrastructure to meet the growing demands of their clientele, particularly in deploying NVIDIA GPU clusters for AI Training and Inferencing.

As an official NVIDIA Cloud Partner, CUDO leveraged validated reference architectures and direct access to the latest GPU generations to ensure consistency and performance across all sites.

Our Client’s Challenges

The customer approached CUDO with three critical challenges:

1. Inability to Source GPU Clusters Quickly:
   The organisation faced fast-scaling demand from its customer base for NVIDIA H100/H200/B200 clusters. With limited global availability for clusters of the required size, they struggled to scale operations efficiently.
2. Lack of Expertise in Managing Large Clusters:
   Large GPU cluster deployments require constant attention and maintenance, significantly more than general cloud services. Many GPU-as-a-Service providers in the market lacked the depth of experience to manage such deployments effectively.
3. Resource Drain:
   Sourcing and managing GPU clusters consumed an unacceptably large amount of the customer’s time and resources, hindering their ability to focus on core business growth.
4. Regulatory Hurdles in GPU Procurement:
   Due to global regulations, customers can face significant restrictions in purchasing large quantities of NVIDIA GPUs. Procurement processes require lengthy approval steps, often taking up to eight + months, with no guarantee of approval. These challenges hinder companies from deploying AI infrastructure on time.

The Solution Provided by CUDO

With over two decades of experience in building data centres, cloud environments, and GPU clusters, CUDO provided a comprehensive solution. Leveraging our expertise, we executed the deployment of a 4,000+ GPU cluster with a meticulous setup, ongoing support, and a service model designed to address the customer's challenges. This deployment was designed in line with NVIDIA reference architecture standards, ensuring peak performance and scalability for large-scale AI workloads.

To address these challenges, CUDO offers a flexible and efficient alternative:

• Hosted GPU Infrastructure
  CUDO provides customers with fully accessible GPU clusters in a dedicated or virtualized environment, allowing them to operate as if the setup were in their own data centers. Clients retain full control over cluster configuration, while CUDO provides both hardware support for system health and expert consultancy on cluster setup, security, and automation.
• End-to-End Deployment in New Data Centers
  For customers needing a GPU cluster from scratch, CUDO assists in design, procurement, setup, and deployment, ensuring compliance with regulations.
• Immediate Access to Pre-Built Clusters
  Through a network of data center partners and GPU cluster suppliers, CUDO can rapidly deploy pre-existing or in-progress clusters. For customers requiring urgent capacity or reduced delivery time, CUDO can coordinate with suppliers in geographically close zones to minimize latency and ensure quick setup.

Addressing Data Sovereignty & Security Concerns

One potential limitation is data sovereignty and confidentiality regulations. Many enterprises and government agencies handle highly sensitive data subject to strict legal constraints on storage and transfer. While some contracts allow data to be hosted outside the country under specific conditions, others require strict in-country management.

CUDO ensures:

• Strict Physical Security – All data centers meet high security standards to protect hosted infrastructure.
• Comprehensive Cybersecurity Measures – Clusters are safeguarded through industry-leading security practices, controlling access and data transfer securely.
• Regulatory Compliance – Solutions are designed to align with local and international compliance requirements, enabling customers to adopt cloud-hosted infrastructure while maintaining control over their data.

This approach allows clients to scale AI workloads without the typical procurement delays or operational overhead while ensuring compliance with security and sovereignty needs.

Deployment Setup

CUDO’s highly skilled systems engineers ensure an end-to-end automated deployment offering a ready solution following best practices delivering NVIDIA reference architecture GPU clusters that are customisable to the clients use cases.

• Golden Image Setup: Customised configurations tailored to the customer's requirements.
• IPMI Health Check and Firmware Upgrades: Ensuring hardware stability and up-to-date firmware.
• Configuration Management: Optimizing the setup for peak performance and ease of maintenance.
• Network Verification and Diagnostics: Guaranteeing robust and reliable connectivity.
• Storage and GPU Cluster Benchmarking: Ensuring the infrastructure met performance and scalability expectations.

24/7 Service and Support

In high-performance computing, every second of downtime or delay can translate to significant financial losses and missed opportunities, reliable support is an absolute necessity. CUDO understands this critical need and offers a comprehensive 24/7 service and support system to ensure uninterrupted operations and provide our clients with complete peace of mind.

To provide unmatched operational reliability, CUDO implemented:

• 24/7 Engineering Support: Full-ticketing system with immediate issue resolution.
• Cluster Health Monitoring: Proactive management to identify and resolve potential issues before they impact performance.
• Technical Diagnostics and Consultancy: Addressing complex support tickets with detailed documentation and reports.
• Performance Reviews: Regular cluster evaluations to ensure optimal functionality and alignment with business objectives.

Cybersecurity and Physical Data Center Security for HPC/AI Clusters

This section outlines the security measures in place for our data centers, including physical and cybersecurity frameworks, regulatory compliance, and best practices for secure access and data protection.

Physical Data Center Security

To maintain a highly secure environment, the data centers we partner with adhere to stringent physical security measures.

Facility Security Measures

• Tiered Data Center Classification: Our facilities align with Tier III and Tier IV standards, ensuring high availability, redundancy, and fault tolerance.
• Controlled Site Access: Access is restricted to authorized personnel only via biometric authentication, RFID keycards, and multi-factor authentication (MFA).
• 24/7 Monitoring & Surveillance: CCTV cameras with real-time analytics monitor all entry points, server rooms, and perimeters.
• Security Personnel: On-site security teams ensure continuous monitoring and response to physical threats.
• Environmental Controls: Fire suppression, temperature, and humidity controls protect hardware infrastructure from environmental hazards:
• Fire Suppression: Advanced fire detection and suppression systems are implemented to minimize the risk of fire damage to equipment and data.
• Climate Control: Precise temperature and humidity control systems maintain optimal operating conditions for IT equipment, reducing the risk of hardware failure and data loss.
• Power Backup: Redundant power supplies and backup generators ensure continuous operation in the event of a power outage, protecting against data loss and service disruption.
• Visitor Management: All visitors are required to register at the reception desk, provide identification, and are escorted by authorized personnel while on-site.
• Regular Audits and Inspections: Regular independent audits and inspections are conducted to ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations. We can provide summaries of these audits upon request, subject to confidentiality agreements.

Compliance & Certifications

A number of our partner data centers comply with the highest industry security standards, including:

• ISO/IEC 27001 – Information security management system (ISMS)
• SOC 2 Type II – Data security and privacy controls
• PCI-DSS – Secure payment data handling
• HIPAA – Healthcare data protection compliance
• GDPR & CCPA – Data protection for EU and California residents
• NIST 800-53 & FedRAMP – Government-grade security standards (for applicable clients)

Cybersecurity & Cluster Security

Network Security

• Firewall & Intrusion Prevention: Enterprise-grade firewalls with deep packet inspection (DPI) and intrusion prevention systems (IPS) block unauthorized access.
• Dedicated VLANs & Network Segmentation: Each client operates within an isolated network to prevent unauthorized cross-tenant access.
• Zero Trust Architecture: Continuous verification of users and devices before granting access.
• DDoS Protection: Mitigation strategies in place to prevent large-scale distributed denial-of-service attacks.
• Virtual Private Networks (VPNs): Secure VPN connections are available for remote access to the clusters, encrypting all communication and protecting data in transit.

Access Control & Identity Management

• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Users are granted least-privilege access based on roles and responsibilities.
• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Required for all privileged user accounts and secure shell (SSH) access.
• Audit Logging & Monitoring: All access attempts and administrative actions are logged for auditing and compliance.
• Federated Identity & Single Sign-On (SSO): Secure access via centralized authentication mechanisms.

Data Protection & Encryption

• End-to-End Encryption: All data in transit is secured using TLS 1.3, while data at rest is encrypted with AES-256.
• Data Transfer: A requirement for each data centre hosting any size cluster to have dual link internet access at a 100GB/s bandwidth. This will guarantee faster data transfer from the client site and ensure data can be transferred in and out of the site to ensure the data does not stay outside of the client owned hardware more than it needs to be.
• Secure Key Management: Hardware security modules (HSMs) are used to store and manage encryption keys.
• Automated Backups & Disaster Recovery: Regular encrypted backups with off-site replication for data resilience, when required.

Security Policies & Incident Response

• Incident Response Plan: Dedicated Security Operations Center (SOC) with real-time threat detection and mitigation strategies.
• Regular Security Audits & Penetration Testing: Regular vulnerability scans and penetration testing are conducted to identify and address potential security weaknesses. Conducted by third-party cybersecurity firms to identify vulnerabilities.
• Compliance with Data Retention Policies: Secure data deletion and lifecycle management according to compliance standards.
• Patch Management: A robust patch management process ensures that all systems are up-to-date with the latest security patches, mitigating known vulnerabilities.

Our Results

The partnership resulted in a highly successful deployment of 4,000+ NVIDIA GPUs. CUDO not only met the customer’s stringent acceptance criteria and SLA but also established a trusted relationship built on reliability and performance. Key outcomes included:

• Accelerated Deployment: Rapid sourcing and deployment of NVIDIA H100 clusters.
• Operational Efficiency: Streamlined cluster management allowed the customer to reallocate internal resources toward growth initiatives.
• Improved Scalability: A replicable process for designing, building, and managing large GPU clusters.

About CUDO

This successful deployment, exemplifies CUDO's commitment to delivering exceptional service and exceeding client expectations. We not only met the customer's stringent acceptance criteria and SLAs but also forged a trusted partnership built on reliability and performance.

By accelerating deployment, improving operational efficiency, and enhancing scalability, CUDO empowers businesses to maximize the potential of GPU technology and drive innovation. As an official NVIDIA Cloud Partner, CUDO continues to provide customers with validated architecture, supply chain advantage, and direct access to the latest GPU technologies, from H100s to B200s.

This case underscores CUDO’s expertise, capability to deliver high-value solutions and has helped position CUDO as a trusted leader in GPU-as-a-Service solutions.

CUDO’s managed service also reflects its broader mission: to deliver high-performance, cost-efficient, and sustainable AI infrastructure that enables clients to scale responsibly while achieving superior business outcomes.

With over two decades of experience – and centuries of combined personnel experience – in building data centers and cloud environments, CUDO is the ideal partner for organizations seeking to deploy complex large-scale GPU clusters.

A Proven Model for Global AI Infrastructure

Together, these results demonstrate how CUDO Compute continues to set the benchmark for dependable, scalable, and high-performance GPU infrastructure, enabling enterprises to accelerate their AI ambitions with confidence.