From 66ce2fa5b76e45cd40ac0394da8e7072f7ac36c2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Erwin Huizenga <erwinh@google.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2025 19:15:09 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] feat: Add sample for Vertex distributed training (#4163)

* feat: Add sample for Vertex distributed training

* refactor: Move distributed training to community content and add job config

* fix: Address review comments and update files

* minor fixes in the script

* updated codeowners
---
 community-content/CODEOWNERS                  |   1 +
 .../llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/README.md     | 126 +++++++++
 .../configs/llama3_1_8b_pretrain_a3mega.yaml  | 265 ++++++++++++++++++
 .../docker/cloudbuild.yml                     |  26 ++
 .../docker/patches/24.09/gpu_stats.patch      |  41 +++
 .../docker/patches/24.09/local_rank.patch     |  41 +++
 .../docker/patches/24.09/nemo2hf.patch        |  13 +
 .../docker/patches/24.09/sigabort.patch       |  24 ++
 .../patches/24.09/throughput_calc.patch       |  13 +
 .../docker/requirements.txt                   |  10 +
 .../docker/uninstall.txt                      |  18 ++
 .../docker/vertex-dist-recipes.Dockerfile     |  66 +++++
 .../job_config.json                           |  16 ++
 .../requirements.txt                          |  49 ++++
 .../scripts/launch.py                         | 173 ++++++++++++
 .../scripts/run.py                            |  85 ++++++
 .../scripts/util/__init__.py                  |   0
 .../scripts/util/cluster_spec.py              |  81 ++++++
 .../scripts/util/cluster_spec_test.py         |  59 ++++
 19 files changed, 1107 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/README.md
 create mode 100644 community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/configs/llama3_1_8b_pretrain_a3mega.yaml
 create mode 100644 community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/cloudbuild.yml
 create mode 100644 community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/patches/24.09/gpu_stats.patch
 create mode 100644 community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/patches/24.09/local_rank.patch
 create mode 100644 community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/patches/24.09/nemo2hf.patch
 create mode 100644 community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/patches/24.09/sigabort.patch
 create mode 100644 community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/patches/24.09/throughput_calc.patch
 create mode 100644 community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/requirements.txt
 create mode 100644 community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/uninstall.txt
 create mode 100644 community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/vertex-dist-recipes.Dockerfile
 create mode 100644 community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/job_config.json
 create mode 100644 community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/requirements.txt
 create mode 100644 community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/scripts/launch.py
 create mode 100644 community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/scripts/run.py
 create mode 100644 community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/scripts/util/__init__.py
 create mode 100644 community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/scripts/util/cluster_spec.py
 create mode 100644 community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/scripts/util/cluster_spec_test.py

diff --git a/community-content/CODEOWNERS b/community-content/CODEOWNERS
index e4c72f6f9..842344e4c 100644
--- a/community-content/CODEOWNERS
+++ b/community-content/CODEOWNERS
@@ -29,4 +29,5 @@
 /vertex_model_garden/model_oss/vllm @kathyyu-google
 /vertex_model_garden/benchmarking_reports @lavraicse
 /vertex_model_garden/model_oss/autogluon @lavraicse
+/vertex_distributed_training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining @mstyer-google @erwinh85 @mchrestkha
 
diff --git a/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/README.md b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..759410695
--- /dev/null
+++ b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,126 @@
+# Vertex AI Training: Llama 3.1 8B pre-training using Nvidia A3 Mega VMs (H100)
+This document provides a step-by-step guide for pre-training a Llama 3.1 8B model on the `en-wiki` dataset using multiple [Vertex AI Custom Training](https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/docs/training/overview) `a3-megagpu-8g` nodes.
+
+We will use a custom container based on NVIDIA's [NeMo Framework](https://docs.nvidia.com/nemo-framework/user-guide/24.07/overview.html) to demonstrate a scalable, multi-node training workflow. All required artifacts and commands are included.
+
+## 1. Prerequisites
+
+### 1.1. Google Cloud Project setup
+- **Enable APIs:** Ensure the Vertex AI API is [enabled for your project](http://console.cloud.google.com/flows/enableapi?apiid=aiplatform.googleapis.com).
+- **H100 Mega Quota:** A3 Mega VMs are powered by H100 GPUs. Request quota for `custom_model_training_nvidia_h100_mega_gpus` in one of the [supported regions](https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/docs/general/locations#accelerator_support). If using Spot VMs, request `custom_model_training_preemptible_nvidia_h100_mega_gpus` quota instead.
+- **Reservations (Optional but recommended):** For guaranteed capacity, [create a reservation](https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/reservations-shared) and ensure the reservation is shared with the Vertex AI service account. This guide requires a minimum of **16 H100 GPUs** (2 full A3 Mega nodes).
+
+### 1.2. GCS bucket
+Create a [Cloud Storage bucket](https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/creating-buckets) in the same region where you have quota. If you're using Hierarchical Namespace for your bucket, you may need to update permissions of the Vertex AI Custom Code Service Agent .
+
+This bucket is used for:
+- Staging the training application.
+- Storing model checkpoints and logs.
+- Storing data if you use your own data.
+
+
+## 2. Setup & configuration
+
+### 2.1. Clone the repo
+First clone the repo into your development environment.
+
+```bash
+git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/vertex-ai-samples.git
+```
+
+Navigate to the root folder for this sample.
+
+### 2.2. Environment Setup
+First, configure your local environment. These variables are used in subsequent commands.
+
+```bash
+# Required: Update with your values
+export PROJECT_ID="<your-project-id>"
+export REPOSITORY="<your-artifact-registry-repo-name>" # e.g., "my-containers"
+export BUCKET="<your-gcs-bucket-name>"
+
+# Optional: Change if needed
+export REGION="us-central1"
+
+# --- Do not change the lines below ---
+export ARTIFACT_REGISTRY="${REGION}-docker.pkg.dev/${PROJECT_ID}/${REPOSITORY}"
+export REPO_ROOT=$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)
+```
+
+## 3. Build and push a docker container image to Artifact Registry
+Normally, you can use any custom training container on Vertex AI Training. In this example you build a NeMo Docker image that is based on the [Nvidia’s NeMo 24.09](https://catalog.ngc.nvidia.com/orgs/nvidia/containers/nemo/tags) image. Use Cloud Build to build and push the container image.
+
+This document picked NeMo as the demonstrating container since it’s a widely adopted GPU LLM training framework providing high performance and versatile training functionalities.
+
+In addition to the base image, some customizations are included to form the final prebuilt image:
+- Some dependencies are installed to integrate with Vertex AI Training.
+- An entrypoint script that sets up required environments and calls the training job.
+- Some patches are applied to the NeMo code to let it  load the dataset from a GCS bucket.
+
+Run this command to build the container and push the container into the Google Artifact Registry.
+
+```bash
+cd "${REPO_ROOT}/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining"
+export IMAGE_NAME="vertex-nemo-llama"
+gcloud builds submit . \
+    --project="${PROJECT_ID}" \
+    --region="${REGION}" \
+    --config=docker/cloudbuild.yml \
+    --substitutions="_ARTIFACT_REGISTRY=${ARTIFACT_REGISTRY},_IMAGE_NAME=${IMAGE_NAME}" \
+    --timeout="2h" \
+    --machine-type="e2-highcpu-32"
+```
+
+## 4. Launch the Training Job
+
+
+###  4.1. Job Configuration File
+Once the container is built, update the job_config.json to set up the training job.
+File: job_config.json
+```json
+{
+  "project_id": "<project-id>",
+  "region": "<region>",
+  "zone": "<zone if using reservation>",
+  "bucket": "<bucket>",
+  "dataset_bucket": "github-repo/data/third-party/enwiki-latest-pages-articles",
+  "image_uri": "<docker image uri from artifact registry>",
+  "strategy": "spot",
+  "nodes": "2",
+  "machine_type": "a3-megagpu-8g",
+  "gpu_type": "NVIDIA_H100_MEGA_80GB",
+  "gpus_per_node": "8",
+  "recipe_name": "llama3_1_8b_pretrain_a3mega",
+  "job_prefix": "vertex-spot-",
+  "reservation_name": ""
+}
+```
+
+### 4.2 Launch the Training Job
+
+First, create a Python virtual environment using your tool of choice, then install
+the requirements specified in `requirements.txt`. Using `pip`, the command would be:
+```bash
+pip install -r requirements.txt
+```
+
+Now launch the Vertex AI training job using the provided Python script.
+
+```bash
+python3 scripts/launch.py --config_file=job_config.json
+```
+
+This script reads job_config.json, defines the cluster specification (2 nodes, 8 GPUs each), and submits the custom training job to Vertex AI.
+
+## 5. Monitor and Clean Up
+
+### 5.1. Monitoring
+Vertex AI Console: Track the job's status in the Google Cloud Console under Vertex AI > Training > Custom Jobs.
+Logs: View detailed logs in Cloud Logging by filtering for your job name.
+Checkpoints: Model checkpoints are saved to your GCS bucket at the path specified in your training script's configuration.
+
+### 5.2. Cleaning Up
+To avoid ongoing charges, delete the resources you created:
+- The Artifact Registry image.
+- The contents of the GCS bucket (checkpoints, logs).
+- The Vertex AI Custom Job will eventually complete or fail, incurring no further cost.
diff --git a/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/configs/llama3_1_8b_pretrain_a3mega.yaml b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/configs/llama3_1_8b_pretrain_a3mega.yaml
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..c048fef52
--- /dev/null
+++ b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/configs/llama3_1_8b_pretrain_a3mega.yaml
@@ -0,0 +1,265 @@
+# Reference:
+# https://github.com/NVIDIA/NeMo-Framework-Launcher/blob/24.07/launcher_scripts/conf/training/llama/llama3_1_8b.yaml
+name: llama3_1_8b_pretrain_a3mega
+restore_from_path: null  # used when starting from a .nemo file
+
+trainer:
+  devices: 8
+  num_nodes: 1
+  accelerator: gpu
+  precision: bf16
+  logger: false  # logger provided by exp_manager
+  enable_checkpointing: false
+  use_distributed_sampler: false
+  max_epochs: -1  # PTL default. In practice, max_steps will be reached first.
+  max_steps: 30  # consumed_samples = global_step * micro_batch_size * data_parallel_size * accumulate_grad_batches
+  log_every_n_steps: 1
+  val_check_interval: null
+  limit_val_batches: 1
+  limit_test_batches: 1
+  accumulate_grad_batches: 1  # do not modify, grad acc is automatic for training megatron models
+  gradient_clip_val: 1.0
+  benchmark: false
+  enable_model_summary: false  # default PTL callback for this does not support model parallelism, instead we log manually
+
+exp_manager:
+  explicit_log_dir: null
+  exp_dir: /data
+  name: ${name}
+  create_dllogger_logger: true
+  dllogger_logger_kwargs:
+    verbose: true
+    stdout: true
+    json_file: "/data/dllogger.json"
+  create_wandb_logger: false
+  wandb_logger_kwargs:
+    project: null
+    name: null
+  resume_if_exists: true
+  resume_ignore_no_checkpoint: true
+  create_checkpoint_callback: false
+  checkpoint_callback_params:
+    monitor: val_loss
+    save_top_k: 3
+    mode: min
+    always_save_nemo: false  # saves nemo file during validation, not implemented for model parallel
+    save_nemo_on_train_end: false  # not recommended when training large models on clusters with short time limits
+    filename: 'megatron_gpt--{val_loss:.2f}-{step}-{consumed_samples}'
+    model_parallel_size: ${multiply:${model.tensor_model_parallel_size}, ${model.pipeline_model_parallel_size}}
+  seconds_to_sleep: 5  # Allows node_rank!=0 to sleep and let node0 to init, like preparing data
+
+model:
+  mcore_gpt: true
+  # specify micro_batch_size, global_batch_size, and model parallelism
+  # gradient accumulation will be done automatically based on data_parallel_size
+  micro_batch_size: 1  # limited by GPU memory
+  global_batch_size: 1024  # will use more micro batches to reach global batch size
+  tensor_model_parallel_size: 1  # intra-layer model parallelism
+  pipeline_model_parallel_size: 2  # inter-layer model parallelism
+  context_parallel_size: 1
+  virtual_pipeline_model_parallel_size: null  # interleaved pipeline
+  ## Sequence Parallelism
+  # Makes tensor parallelism more memory efficient for LLMs (20B+) by parallelizing layer norms and dropout sequentially
+  # See Reducing Activation Recomputation in Large Transformer Models: https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.05198 for more details.
+  sequence_parallel: false
+
+  fsdp: false
+  fsdp_cpu_offload: true
+  fsdp_sharding_strategy: "full"  # Method to shard model states. Available options are 'full', 'hybrid', and 'grad'.
+  fsdp_grad_reduce_dtype: "16"  # Gradient reduction data type.
+  fsdp_sharded_checkpoint: false  # Store and load FSDP shared checkpoint.
+  fsdp_use_orig_params: false  # Set to True to use FSDP for specific peft scheme.
+
+  # Distributed checkpoint setup
+  dist_ckpt_format: "torch_dist"  # Set to 'torch_dist' to use PyTorch distributed checkpoint format.
+  dist_ckpt_load_on_device: true  # whether to load checkpoint weights directly on GPU or to CPU
+  dist_ckpt_parallel_save: true  # if true, each worker will write its own part of the dist checkpoint
+  dist_ckpt_parallel_save_within_dp: false  # if true, save will be parallelized only within a DP group (whole world otherwise), which might slightly reduce the save overhead
+  dist_ckpt_parallel_load: false  # if true, each worker will load part of the dist checkpoint and exchange with NCCL. Might use some extra GPU memory
+  dist_ckpt_torch_dist_multiproc: 2  # number of extra processes per rank used during ckpt save with PyTorch distributed format
+  dist_ckpt_assume_constant_structure: false  # set to True only if the state dict structure doesn't change within a single job. Allows caching some computation across checkpoint saves.
+  dist_ckpt_parallel_dist_opt: true  # parallel save/load of a DistributedOptimizer. 'True' allows performant save and reshardable checkpoints. Set to 'False' only in order to minimize the number of checkpoint files.
+  dist_ckpt_load_strictness: null  # defines checkpoint keys mismatch behavior (only during dist-ckpt load). Choices: assume_ok_unexpected (default - try loading without any check), log_all (log mismatches), raise_all (raise mismatches)
+
+  # model architecture
+  encoder_seq_length: 8192
+  max_position_embeddings: ${.encoder_seq_length}
+  num_layers: 32  # 8b: 32 | 70b: 80 | 405b: 126
+  hidden_size: 4096  # 8b: 4096 | 70b: 8192 | 405b: 16384
+  ffn_hidden_size: 14336  # 8b: 14336 | 70b: 28672 | 405b: 53248
+  num_attention_heads: 32  # 8b: 32 | 70b: 64 | 405b: 128
+  num_query_groups: 8  # Number of query groups for group query attention. If None, normal attention is used. 8b: 8 | 70b: 8 | 405b: 16
+  init_method_std: 0.01  # Standard deviation of the zero mean normal distribution used for weight initialization.  8b: 0.01 | 70b: 0.008944 | 405b: 0.02
+  use_scaled_init_method: true  # use scaled residuals initialization
+  hidden_dropout: 0.0  # Dropout probability for hidden state transformer.
+  attention_dropout: 0.0  # Dropout probability for attention
+  ffn_dropout: 0.0  # Dropout probability in the feed-forward layer.
+  kv_channels: null  # Projection weights dimension in multi-head attention. Set to hidden_size // num_attention_heads if null
+  apply_query_key_layer_scaling: true  # scale Q * K^T by 1 / layer-number.
+  normalization: 'rmsnorm'  # Normalization layer to use. Options are 'layernorm', 'rmsnorm'
+  layernorm_epsilon: 1e-5
+  do_layer_norm_weight_decay: false  # True means weight decay on all params
+  make_vocab_size_divisible_by: 128  # Pad the vocab size to be divisible by this value for computation efficiency.
+  pre_process: true  # add embedding
+  post_process: true  # add pooler
+  persist_layer_norm: true  # Use of persistent fused layer norm kernel.
+  bias: false  # Whether to use bias terms in all weight matrices.
+  activation: 'fast-swiglu'  # Options ['gelu', 'geglu', 'swiglu', 'reglu', 'squared-relu', 'fast-geglu', 'fast-swiglu', 'fast-reglu']
+  headscale: false  # Whether to learn extra parameters that scale the output of the each self-attention head.
+  transformer_block_type: 'pre_ln'  # Options ['pre_ln', 'post_ln', 'normformer']
+  openai_gelu: false  # Use OpenAI's GELU instead of the default GeLU
+  normalize_attention_scores: true  # Whether to scale the output Q * K^T by 1 / sqrt(hidden_size_per_head). This arg is provided as a configuration option mostly for compatibility with models that have been weight-converted from HF. You almost always want to se this to True.
+  position_embedding_type: 'rope'  # Position embedding type. Options ['learned_absolute', 'rope']
+  rotary_percentage: 1.0  # If using position_embedding_type=rope, then the per head dim is multiplied by this.
+  attention_type: 'multihead'  # Attention type. Options ['multihead']
+  share_embeddings_and_output_weights: false  # Share embedding and output layer weights.
+  scale_positional_embedding: true  # This is false for llama3 models. Only used for >= llama3.1.
+
+  # Use GPT2BPETokenizer for test, because the testing dataset is tokenized by this tokenizer.
+  # https://docs.nvidia.com/nemo-framework/user-guide/24.07/playbooks/singlenodepretrain.html#data-download-and-pre-processing
+  tokenizer:
+    library: megatron
+    type: GPT2BPETokenizer
+    model: null  # /path/to/tokenizer.model
+    vocab_file: null
+    merge_file: null
+    delimiter: null  # only used for tabular tokenizer
+    sentencepiece_legacy: false  # Legacy=True allows you to add special tokens to sentencepiece tokenizers.
+
+  # Mixed precision
+  native_amp_init_scale: 4294967296  # 2 ** 32
+  native_amp_growth_interval: 1000
+  hysteresis: 2  # Gradient scale hysteresis
+  fp32_residual_connection: false  # Move residual connections to fp32
+  fp16_lm_cross_entropy: false  # Move the cross entropy unreduced loss calculation for lm head to fp16
+
+  # Megatron O2-style half-precision
+  megatron_amp_O2: true  # Enable O2-level automatic mixed precision using main parameters
+  grad_allreduce_chunk_size_mb: 125
+
+  # Fusion
+  grad_div_ar_fusion: true  # Fuse grad division into torch.distributed.all_reduce. Only used with O2 and no pipeline parallelism..
+  gradient_accumulation_fusion: true  # Fuse weight gradient accumulation to GEMMs. Only used with pipeline parallelism and O2.
+  bias_activation_fusion: true  # Use a kernel that fuses the bias addition from weight matrices with the subsequent activation function.
+  bias_dropout_add_fusion: true  # Use a kernel that fuses the bias addition, dropout and residual connection addition.
+  masked_softmax_fusion: true  # Use a kernel that fuses the attention softmax with it's mask.
+  apply_rope_fusion: true  # Use a kernel to add rotary positional embeddings. Only used if position_embedding_type=rope
+  cross_entropy_loss_fusion: true
+
+  # Miscellaneous
+  seed: 1234
+  resume_from_checkpoint: null  # manually set the checkpoint file to load from
+  use_cpu_initialization: false  # Init weights on the CPU (slow for large models)
+  onnx_safe: false  # Use work-arounds for known problems with Torch ONNX exporter.
+  apex_transformer_log_level: 30  # Python logging level displays logs with severity greater than or equal to this
+  gradient_as_bucket_view: true  # PyTorch DDP argument. Allocate gradients in a contiguous bucket to save memory (less fragmentation and buffer memory)
+  sync_batch_comm: false  # Enable stream synchronization after each p2p communication between pipeline stages
+
+  ## Activation Checkpointing
+  # NeMo Megatron supports 'selective' activation checkpointing where only the memory intensive part of attention is checkpointed.
+  # These memory intensive activations are also less compute intensive which makes activation checkpointing more efficient for LLMs (20B+).
+  # See Reducing Activation Recomputation in Large Transformer Models: https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.05198 for more details.
+  # 'full' will checkpoint the entire transformer layer.
+  activations_checkpoint_granularity: null  # 'selective' or 'full'
+  activations_checkpoint_method: null  # 'uniform', 'block'
+  # 'uniform' divides the total number of transformer layers and checkpoints the input activation
+  # of each chunk at the specified granularity. When used with 'selective', 'uniform' checkpoints all attention blocks in the model.
+  # 'block' checkpoints the specified number of layers per pipeline stage at the specified granularity
+  activations_checkpoint_num_layers: null
+  # when using 'uniform' this creates groups of transformer layers to checkpoint. Usually set to 1. Increase to save more memory.
+  # when using 'block' this this will checkpoint the first activations_checkpoint_num_layers per pipeline stage.
+  num_micro_batches_with_partial_activation_checkpoints: null
+  # This feature is valid only when used with pipeline-model-parallelism.
+  # When an integer value is provided, it sets the number of micro-batches where only a partial number of Transformer layers get checkpointed
+  # and recomputed within a window of micro-batches. The rest of micro-batches in the window checkpoint all Transformer layers. The size of window is
+  # set by the maximum outstanding micro-batch backpropagations, which varies at different pipeline stages. The number of partial layers to checkpoint
+  # per micro-batch is set by 'activations_checkpoint_num_layers' with 'activations_checkpoint_method' of 'block'.
+  # This feature enables using activation checkpoint at a fraction of micro-batches up to the point of full GPU memory usage.
+  activations_checkpoint_layers_per_pipeline: null
+  # This feature is valid only when used with pipeline-model-parallelism.
+  # When an integer value (rounded down when float is given) is provided, it sets the number of Transformer layers to skip checkpointing at later
+  # pipeline stages. For example, 'activations_checkpoint_layers_per_pipeline' of 3 makes pipeline stage 1 to checkpoint 3 layers less than
+  # stage 0 and stage 2 to checkpoint 6 layers less stage 0, and so on. This is possible because later pipeline stage
+  # uses less GPU memory with fewer outstanding micro-batch backpropagations. Used with 'num_micro_batches_with_partial_activation_checkpoints',
+  # this feature removes most of activation checkpoints at the last pipeline stage, which is the critical execution path.
+
+  ## Transformer Engine
+  transformer_engine: true
+  fp8: false  # enables fp8 in TransformerLayer forward
+  fp8_e4m3: false  # sets fp8_format = recipe.Format.E4M3
+  fp8_hybrid: false  # sets fp8_format = recipe.Format.HYBRID
+  fp8_margin: 0  # scaling margin
+  fp8_interval: 1  # scaling update interval
+  fp8_amax_history_len: 1024  # Number of steps for which amax history is recorded per tensor
+  fp8_amax_compute_algo: 'max'  # 'most_recent' or 'max'. Algorithm for computing amax from history
+  ub_tp_comm_overlap: false  # do not turn on because of b/397797926
+  use_flash_attention: true
+  gc_interval: 100
+
+  ## Offloading Activations/Weights to CPU
+  cpu_offloading: false
+  cpu_offloading_num_layers: ${sum:${.num_layers},-1}  # This value should be between [1,num_layers-1] as we don't want to offload the final layer's activations and expose any offloading duration for the final layer
+  cpu_offloading_activations: true
+  cpu_offloading_weights: true
+
+  data:
+    # Path to data must be specified by the user.
+    # Supports List, String and Dictionary
+    # List : can override from the CLI: "model.data.data_prefix=[.5,/raid/data/pile/my-gpt3_00_text_document,.5,/raid/data/pile/my-gpt3_01_text_document]",
+    # Or see example below:
+    # data_prefix:
+    # - .5
+    # - /raid/data/pile/my-gpt3_00_text_document
+    # - .5
+    # - /raid/data/pile/my-gpt3_01_text_document
+    # Dictionary: can override from CLI "model.data.data_prefix"={"train":[1.0, /path/to/data], "validation":/path/to/data, "test":/path/to/test}
+    # Or see example below:
+    # "model.data.data_prefix: {train:[1.0,/path/to/data], validation:[/path/to/data], test:[/path/to/test]}"
+    data_prefix: [1.0, /data/hfbpe_gpt_training_data_text_document]
+    index_mapping_dir: null  # path to save index mapping .npy files, by default will save in the same location as data_prefix
+    data_impl: mmap
+    splits_string: 900,50,50
+    seq_length: ${model.encoder_seq_length}
+    skip_warmup: true
+    num_workers: 2
+    dataloader_type: single  # cyclic
+    reset_position_ids: false  # Reset position ids after end-of-document token
+    reset_attention_mask: false  # Reset attention mask after end-of-document token
+    eod_mask_loss: false  # Mask loss for the end of document tokens
+    validation_drop_last: true  # Set to false if the last partial validation samples is to be consumed
+    no_seqlen_plus_one_input_tokens: false  # Set to True to disable fetching (sequence length + 1) input tokens, instead get (sequence length) input tokens and mask the last token
+    pad_samples_to_global_batch_size: false  # Set to True if you want to pad the last partial batch with -1's to equal global batch size
+    shuffle_documents: true  # Set to False to disable documents shuffling. Sample index will still be shuffled
+
+  # Nsys profiling options
+  nsys_profile:
+    enabled: false
+    start_step: 0  # Global batch to start profiling
+    end_step: 1  # Global batch to end profiling
+    ranks: [0]  # Global rank IDs to profile
+    gen_shape: false  # Generate model and kernel details including input shapes
+
+  memory_profile:
+    enabled: false
+    start_step: 0
+    end_step: 1
+    ranks: [0]
+    output_path: /data  # Must be a dir
+
+  optim:
+    name: distributed_fused_adam  # E.g., fused_adam or set _target_: torch.optim.AdamW field
+    lr: 2e-5
+    weight_decay: 0.01
+    betas:
+    - 0.9
+    - 0.98
+    bucket_cap_mb: 125
+    overlap_grad_sync: true
+    overlap_param_sync: true
+    contiguous_grad_buffer: true
+    contiguous_param_buffer: true
+    sched:
+      name: CosineAnnealing
+      warmup_steps: 400
+      constant_steps: 0
+      min_lr: 2e-6
diff --git a/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/cloudbuild.yml b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/cloudbuild.yml
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..ba5023960
--- /dev/null
+++ b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/cloudbuild.yml
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+# Copyright 2024 Google LLC
+#
+# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
+# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
+# You may obtain a copy of the License at
+#
+#     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+#
+# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+# limitations under the License.
+
+steps:
+- name: 'gcr.io/cloud-builders/docker'
+  args:
+  - 'build'
+  - '--tag=${_ARTIFACT_REGISTRY}/${_IMAGE_NAME}'
+  - '--file=docker/vertex-dist-recipes.Dockerfile'
+  - '.'
+  automapSubstitutions: true
+  env:
+  - 'DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1'
+images:
+- '${_ARTIFACT_REGISTRY}/${_IMAGE_NAME}'
diff --git a/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/patches/24.09/gpu_stats.patch b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/patches/24.09/gpu_stats.patch
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..531a3d6da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/patches/24.09/gpu_stats.patch
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
+diff --git a/nemo/collections/nlp/parts/megatron_trainer_builder.py b/nemo/collections/nlp/parts/megatron_trainer_builder.py
+index b2c85cde4..a3a9670c3 100644
+--- a/nemo/collections/nlp/parts/megatron_trainer_builder.py
++++ b/nemo/collections/nlp/parts/megatron_trainer_builder.py
+@@ -19,6 +19,7 @@ from lightning_fabric.utilities.exceptions import MisconfigurationException
+ from omegaconf import DictConfig
+ from pytorch_lightning import Trainer
+ from pytorch_lightning.callbacks import ModelSummary
++from pytorch_lightning.callbacks import Callback
+ from pytorch_lightning.plugins.environments import TorchElasticEnvironment
+
+ from nemo.collections.common.metrics.perf_metrics import FLOPsMeasurementCallback
+@@ -38,6 +39,23 @@ from nemo.utils.callbacks.dist_ckpt_io import (
+     AsyncFinalizerCallback,
+     DistributedCheckpointIO,
+ )
++from vmg.util.device_stats import gpu_stats_str
++
++class GpuStatsMon(Callback):
++    def on_train_start(self, trainer, pl_module) -> None:
++        rank=pl_module.global_rank
++        print(f'train_start: {rank=} {gpu_stats_str()}', flush=True)
++
++    def on_train_batch_start(self, trainer, pl_module, batch, batch_idx) -> None:
++        rank=pl_module.global_rank
++        print(f'batch_start: {rank=} {gpu_stats_str()}', flush=True)
++
++    def on_train_batch_end(self, trainer, pl_module, outputs, batch, batch_idx) -> None:
++        rank=pl_module.global_rank
++        print(f'batch_end: {rank=} {gpu_stats_str()}', flush=True)
+
+
+ class MegatronTrainerBuilder:
+@@ -178,6 +196,7 @@ class MegatronTrainerBuilder:
+         if self.cfg.get('exp_manager', {}).get('log_tflops_per_sec_per_gpu', True):
+             callbacks.append(FLOPsMeasurementCallback(self.cfg))
+
++        callbacks.append(GpuStatsMon())
+         return callbacks
+
+     def create_trainer(self, callbacks=None) -> Trainer:
diff --git a/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/patches/24.09/local_rank.patch b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/patches/24.09/local_rank.patch
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..2ac2e8a20
--- /dev/null
+++ b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/patches/24.09/local_rank.patch
@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
+diff -ruN old-datasets/blended_megatron_dataset_builder.py datasets/blended_megatron_dataset_builder.py
+--- old-datasets/blended_megatron_dataset_builder.py	2025-05-02 04:08:45.369199665 +0000
++++ datasets/blended_megatron_dataset_builder.py	2025-05-02 04:10:47.369119891 +0000
+@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
+
+ import logging
+ import math
++import os
+ from concurrent.futures import ThreadPoolExecutor
+ from typing import Any, Callable, Iterable, List, Optional, Type, Union
+
+@@ -353,7 +354,7 @@
+         num_dataset_builder_threads = self.config.num_dataset_builder_threads
+
+         if torch.distributed.is_initialized():
+-            rank = torch.distributed.get_rank()
++            rank = int(os.getenv("LOCAL_RANK", "0"))
+             # First, build on rank 0
+             if rank == 0:
+                 num_workers = num_dataset_builder_threads
+@@ -475,7 +476,7 @@
+             Optional[Union[DistributedDataset, Iterable]]: The DistributedDataset instantion, the Iterable instantiation, or None
+         """
+         if torch.distributed.is_initialized():
+-            rank = torch.distributed.get_rank()
++            rank = int(os.getenv("LOCAL_RANK", "0"))
+
+             dataset = None
+
+diff -ruN old-datasets/gpt_dataset.py datasets/gpt_dataset.py
+--- old-datasets/gpt_dataset.py	2025-05-02 04:08:45.369199665 +0000
++++ datasets/gpt_dataset.py	2025-05-02 04:09:30.309170278 +0000
+@@ -351,7 +351,7 @@
+
+         if not path_to_cache or (
+             not cache_hit
+-            and (not torch.distributed.is_initialized() or torch.distributed.get_rank() == 0)
++            and (not torch.distributed.is_initialized() or int(os.getenv("LOCAL_RANK", "0")) == 0)
+         ):
+
+             log_single_rank(
diff --git a/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/patches/24.09/nemo2hf.patch b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/patches/24.09/nemo2hf.patch
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..569c7e181
--- /dev/null
+++ b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/patches/24.09/nemo2hf.patch
@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+diff --git a/scripts/checkpoint_converters/convert_llama_nemo_to_hf.py b/scripts/checkpoint_converters/convert_llama_nemo_to_hf.py
+index 8da15148d..005cae6c9 100644
+--- a/scripts/checkpoint_converters/convert_llama_nemo_to_hf.py
++++ b/scripts/checkpoint_converters/convert_llama_nemo_to_hf.py
+@@ -104,6 +104,8 @@ def convert(input_nemo_file, output_hf_file, precision=None, cpu_only=False) ->
+     dummy_trainer = Trainer(devices=1, accelerator='cpu', strategy=NLPDDPStrategy())
+     model_config = MegatronGPTModel.restore_from(input_nemo_file, trainer=dummy_trainer, return_config=True)
+     model_config.tensor_model_parallel_size = 1
++    model_config.virtual_pipeline_model_parallel_size = None
++    model_config.sequence_parallel = False
+     model_config.pipeline_model_parallel_size = 1
+     if cpu_only:
+         map_location = torch.device('cpu')
diff --git a/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/patches/24.09/sigabort.patch b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/patches/24.09/sigabort.patch
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..7d12080da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/patches/24.09/sigabort.patch
@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
+diff --git a/examples/nlp/language_modeling/tuning/megatron_gpt_finetuning.py b/examples/nlp/language_modeling/tuning/megatron_gpt_finetuning.py
+index bfe8ea359..dfeaf93b5 100644
+--- a/examples/nlp/language_modeling/tuning/megatron_gpt_finetuning.py
++++ b/examples/nlp/language_modeling/tuning/megatron_gpt_finetuning.py
+@@ -13,6 +13,8 @@
+ # limitations under the License.
+
+ import torch.multiprocessing as mp
++import torch.distributed as dist
++
+ from omegaconf.omegaconf import OmegaConf
+
+ from nemo.collections.nlp.models.language_modeling.megatron_gpt_sft_model import MegatronGPTSFTModel
+@@ -76,6 +78,10 @@ def main(cfg) -> None:
+
+     trainer.fit(model)
+
++    if dist.is_available() and dist.is_initialized():
++        dist.barrier()
++        dist.destroy_process_group()
++
+
+ if __name__ == '__main__':
+     main()
diff --git a/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/patches/24.09/throughput_calc.patch b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/patches/24.09/throughput_calc.patch
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..ea8a620ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/patches/24.09/throughput_calc.patch
@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+diff --git a/src/utils/training_metrics/process_training_results.py b/src/utils/training_metrics/process_training_results.py
+index 3e82a66..e61e1d8 100644
+--- a/src/utils/training_metrics/process_training_results.py
++++ b/src/utils/training_metrics/process_training_results.py
+@@ -134,7 +134,7 @@ def get_average_step_time(file: str, start_step: int, end_step: int) -> float:
+     for line in datajson:
+         if line.get("step") != "PARAMETER":
+             step = line.get("step")
+-            if step >= start_step and step <= end_step:
++            if step >= start_step and step <= end_step and "train_step_timing in s" in line["data"]:
+                 time_step_accumulator += line["data"].get("train_step_timing in s")
+                 num_steps += 1
+     if num_steps == 0:
diff --git a/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/requirements.txt b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/requirements.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..c178cabbc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/requirements.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+dllogger@git+https://github.com/NVIDIA/dllogger@v1.0.0
+
+# Fixing these libraries versions to avoid conflicting or broken packages.
+immutabledict==4.2.1
+protobuf==3.20.3
+opencv-python-headless==4.11.0.86
+docutils==0.16
+urllib3==2.0.7
+google-cloud-storage==3.0.0
+retrying
diff --git a/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/uninstall.txt b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/uninstall.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..5ef99361a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/uninstall.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
+# cuml-cu12==24.8.0 was installed in nemo:24.09
+# Removing cuml=24.4.0 to avoid conflicting packages.
+cudf==24.4.0
+cugraph==24.4.0
+cugraph-service-server==24.4.0
+cuml==24.4.0
+dask-cudf==24.4.0
+raft-dask==24.4.0
+cugraph-dgl==24.4.0
+cugraph-pyg==24.4.0
+# The following packages are removed temporarily to avoid conflicting packages
+# and can be brought back if needed.
+tensorrt-llm==0.12.0
+img2dataset==1.45.0
+Sphinx==8.1.3
+sphinxcontrib-bibtex==2.6.3
+torchx==0.7.0
+nemo-run
diff --git a/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/vertex-dist-recipes.Dockerfile b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/vertex-dist-recipes.Dockerfile
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..1d7c0bce2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/docker/vertex-dist-recipes.Dockerfile
@@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
+# Dockerfile wrapping NeMo.
+#
+# To workaround base nemo docker image using too many layers, we use Multi-stage
+# build to first collect the additional files we'll need.
+FROM alpine:latest AS prep_files
+WORKDIR /workspace
+RUN mkdir -p configs vdt vdt/util
+COPY scripts/*.py vdt/
+COPY scripts/util/*.py vdt/util/
+COPY configs/* configs/
+COPY docker/patches/24.09/* vdt/patches/
+RUN chmod a+rwX -R vdt
+# Copy license.
+RUN wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/vertex-ai-samples/main/LICENSE
+
+# Available tags
+# https://catalog.ngc.nvidia.com/orgs/nvidia/containers/nemo/tags
+# It installs NeMo source code in /opt/NeMo folder, with tag=r2.0.0
+FROM nvcr.io/nvidia/nemo:24.09
+
+RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y sudo zsh tmux && \
+    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists*
+
+RUN echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/cloud.google.gpg] http://packages.cloud.google.com/apt cloud-sdk main" | \
+    tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-cloud-sdk.list && \
+    curl https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg | \
+    apt-key --keyring /usr/share/keyrings/cloud.google.gpg add - && \
+    apt-get update -y && apt-get install google-cloud-sdk -y && \
+    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists*
+
+# Install libraries with pip
+ENV PIP_ROOT_USER_ACTION=ignore
+
+# We expect this will be run in the root directory of the vertex-dist-recipes repo
+ARG HOST_SRC_DIR="."
+
+# The pre-installed NeMo introduces a lot of deps conflicts.
+# We uninstall the confilicting libs and reinstall some of them as needed.
+COPY ${HOST_SRC_DIR}/docker/uninstall.txt /tmp/uninstall.txt
+RUN cat /tmp/uninstall.txt | grep -v '#' | xargs pip uninstall -y
+COPY ${HOST_SRC_DIR}/docker/requirements.txt /tmp/requirements.txt
+RUN pip install -r /tmp/requirements.txt
+
+# Make sure there's no inconsistent pip libraries.
+RUN pip check
+
+WORKDIR /workspace
+
+# Copy configs
+COPY ${HOST_SRC_DIR}/configs/* /opt/NeMo/examples/nlp/language_modeling/conf/
+
+# Copy all additional files we need from `prep_files` image.
+COPY --from=prep_files /workspace/ .
+
+# Install for `src/utils/training_metrics/process_training_results.py` to report
+# throughput and MFU numbers.
+RUN git clone https://github.com/AI-Hypercomputer/gpu-recipes.git
+
+# This hack is needed for multi-node training while not using a sharing file system.
+RUN patch --verbose -l -d /opt/megatron-lm/megatron/core/datasets -p1 -i /workspace/vdt/patches/local_rank.patch; \
+    git -C /workspace/gpu-recipes apply /workspace/vdt/patches/throughput_calc.patch; \
+    git -C /opt/NeMo apply /workspace/vdt/patches/nemo2hf.patch; \
+    git -C /opt/NeMo apply /workspace/vdt/patches/sigabort.patch;
+# git -C /opt/NeMo apply /workspace/vdt/patches/gpu_stats.patch;
+
+# Do not put an entrypoint here. Specify the entrypoint in the docker run script.
diff --git a/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/job_config.json b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/job_config.json
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..f02cf8eb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/job_config.json
@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+{
+  "project_id": "<your_project_id>",
+  "region": "us-central1",
+  "zone": "us-central1-c",
+  "bucket": "<your_bucket",
+  "dataset_bucket": "github-repo/data/third-party/enwiki-latest-pages-articles",
+  "image_uri": "<your_image_uri>",
+  "strategy": "spot",
+  "nodes": "2",
+  "machine_type": "a3-megagpu-8g",
+  "gpu_type": "NVIDIA_H100_MEGA_80GB",
+  "gpus_per_node": "8",
+  "recipe_name": "llama3_1_8b_pretrain_a3mega",
+  "job_prefix": "vertex-ai",
+  "reservation_name": ""
+}
diff --git a/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/requirements.txt b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/requirements.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..f3ecc9fe7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/requirements.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+absl-py==2.2.2
+annotated-types==0.7.0
+anyio==4.9.0
+black==25.1.0
+cachetools==5.5.2
+certifi==2025.4.26
+charset-normalizer==3.4.2
+click==8.1.8
+docstring_parser==0.16
+google-api-core==2.24.2
+google-auth==2.40.1
+google-cloud-aiplatform==1.92.0
+google-cloud-bigquery==3.31.0
+google-cloud-core==2.4.3
+google-cloud-resource-manager==1.14.2
+google-cloud-storage==2.19.0
+google-crc32c==1.7.1
+google-genai==1.14.0
+google-resumable-media==2.7.2
+googleapis-common-protos==1.70.0
+grpc-google-iam-v1==0.14.2
+grpcio==1.71.0
+grpcio-status==1.71.0
+h11==0.16.0
+httpcore==1.0.9
+httpx==0.28.1
+idna==3.10
+mypy_extensions==1.1.0
+numpy==2.2.5
+packaging==25.0
+pathspec==0.12.1
+platformdirs==4.3.8
+proto-plus==1.26.1
+protobuf==5.29.4
+pyasn1==0.6.1
+pyasn1_modules==0.4.2
+pydantic==2.11.4
+pydantic_core==2.33.2
+python-dateutil==2.9.0.post0
+pytz==2025.2
+requests==2.32.3
+rsa==4.9.1
+shapely==2.1.0
+six==1.17.0
+sniffio==1.3.1
+typing-inspection==0.4.0
+typing_extensions==4.13.2
+urllib3==2.4.0
+websockets==15.0.1
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/scripts/launch.py b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/scripts/launch.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..7f049c914
--- /dev/null
+++ b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/scripts/launch.py
@@ -0,0 +1,173 @@
+"""Launch script for Vertex distributed training"""
+
+# Copy the sample_job_config.json file to job_config.json
+# to define the job parameters.
+#
+# Run like this:
+#
+#   python3 vertex_dist_train/launch.py --config_file=job_config.json
+#
+
+import datetime
+import json
+import os
+import pprint
+from collections.abc import Sequence
+from typing import Any, List
+
+from absl import app, flags
+from google.cloud import aiplatform
+from google.cloud.aiplatform_v1.types.custom_job import Scheduling
+from pytz import timezone
+
+FLAGS = flags.FLAGS
+flags.DEFINE_string("config_file", None, "Path to JSON config file")
+flags.DEFINE_boolean(
+    "debug", False, "Debug mode: just print the command, don't run it."
+)
+
+
+def launch_job(
+    job_name: str,
+    project: str,
+    region: str,
+    gcs_bucket: str,
+    image_uri: str,
+    entrypoint_cmd: List[str],
+    trainer_args: List[Any],
+    num_nodes: int,
+    machine_type: str,
+    num_gpus_per_node: int,
+    gpu_type: str,
+    strategy: str,
+    reservation_name: str = "",
+):
+    assert strategy in ("dws", "spot", "reservation")
+    aiplatform.init(
+        project=project, location=region, staging_bucket=gcs_bucket
+    )
+
+    train_job = aiplatform.CustomContainerTrainingJob(
+        display_name=job_name,
+        container_uri=image_uri,
+        command=entrypoint_cmd,
+    )
+
+    job_args = dict(
+        args=trainer_args,
+        enable_web_access=True,
+        replica_count=num_nodes,
+        machine_type=machine_type,
+        accelerator_type=gpu_type,
+        accelerator_count=num_gpus_per_node,
+        boot_disk_size_gb=1000,
+        restart_job_on_worker_restart=True,
+        #restart_job_on_worker_restart=False,
+    )
+
+    if strategy == "spot":
+        job_args.update({"scheduling_strategy": Scheduling.Strategy.SPOT.name})
+    elif strategy == "dws":
+        job_args.update(
+            {"scheduling_strategy": Scheduling.Strategy.FLEX_START.name}
+        )
+    elif strategy == "reservation":
+        assert reservation_name != "", (
+            "If using a reservation, provide the reservation_name in the "
+            "format `projects/{project_id_or_number}/zones/{zone}/"
+            "reservations/{reservation_name}`"
+        )
+        job_args.update(
+            {
+                "reservation_affinity_type": "SPECIFIC_RESERVATION",
+                "reservation_affinity_key": "compute.googleapis.com/reservation-name",
+                "reservation_affinity_values": [reservation_name],
+            }
+        )
+
+    pprint.pprint(job_args)
+    if not FLAGS.debug:
+        train_job.submit(**job_args)
+
+
+def main(argv: Sequence[str]) -> None:
+    config_file_path = FLAGS.config_file
+    print(f"Reading job config from {config_file_path}")
+    with open(config_file_path, encoding="utf-8") as config_file:
+        config = json.load(config_file)
+
+    project_id = config["project_id"]
+    region = config["region"]
+    zone = config["zone"]
+    bucket = config["bucket"]
+    dataset_bucket = config["dataset_bucket"]
+    n_nodes = int(config["nodes"])
+    machine_type = config["machine_type"]
+    num_gpus_per_node = int(config["gpus_per_node"])
+    gpu_type = config["gpu_type"]
+    reservation_name = config.get("reservation_name")
+    reservation_full_name = (
+        f"projects/{project_id}/zones/{zone}/reservations/{reservation_name}"
+        if "reservation_name" in config
+        else ""
+    )
+
+    strategy = config["strategy"]
+    recipe_name = config["recipe_name"]
+    job_prefix = config["job_prefix"]
+    image_uri = config["image_uri"]
+
+    # Job name
+    timestamp = (
+        datetime.datetime.now()
+        .astimezone(timezone("US/Pacific"))
+        .strftime("%Y%m%d_%H%M%S")
+    )
+    job_name = f"{recipe_name}-{timestamp}"
+    if job_prefix:
+        job_name = f"{job_prefix}-{job_name}"
+
+    base_output_dir = os.path.join("/gcs", bucket, job_name)
+
+    # Training command and args
+    entrypoint_cmd = ["python3", "vdt/run.py"]
+
+    dataset_bucket = f"gs://{config['dataset_bucket']}"
+
+    trainer_args = [
+        f"--train_data_gcs={dataset_bucket}",
+        "/opt/NeMo/examples/nlp/language_modeling/megatron_gpt_pretraining.py",
+        "--config-path=conf/",
+        f"--config-name={recipe_name}.yaml",
+        f"exp_manager.explicit_log_dir={base_output_dir}",
+        f"exp_manager.dllogger_logger_kwargs.json_file={base_output_dir}/dllogger.json",
+        "+exp_manager.create_tensorboard_logger=true",
+        "exp_manager.create_checkpoint_callback=false",
+        f"trainer.num_nodes={n_nodes}",
+        f"trainer.devices={num_gpus_per_node}",
+        "trainer.max_steps=10",
+        "trainer.log_every_n_steps=1",
+        "model.tokenizer.vocab_file=/data/gpt2-vocab.json",
+        "model.tokenizer.merge_file=/data/gpt2-merges.txt",
+        "model.data.data_prefix=[1.0,/data/hfbpe_gpt_training_data_text_document]",
+    ]
+
+    launch_job(
+        job_name=job_name,
+        project=project_id,
+        region=region,
+        gcs_bucket=bucket,
+        image_uri=image_uri,
+        entrypoint_cmd=entrypoint_cmd,
+        trainer_args=trainer_args,
+        num_nodes=n_nodes,
+        machine_type=machine_type,
+        num_gpus_per_node=num_gpus_per_node,
+        gpu_type=gpu_type,
+        strategy=strategy,
+        reservation_name=reservation_full_name,
+    )
+
+
+if __name__ == "__main__":
+    app.run(main)
diff --git a/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/scripts/run.py b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/scripts/run.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..513f5b95a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/scripts/run.py
@@ -0,0 +1,85 @@
+"""Entrypoint for Vertex Distributed Training container."""
+
+import argparse
+import os
+import sys
+from collections.abc import Sequence
+from subprocess import STDOUT, check_output, run
+
+from absl import app, flags, logging
+from util import cluster_spec
+
+from retrying import retry
+
+# PyTorch barrier call which synchronizes all of the nodes before launching the training process.
+# This makes sure that processes will block until all processes are ready.
+# Improves the reliability of spot VM usage for multi-node training jobs
+
+@retry(stop_max_attempt_number=100, wait_exponential_multiplier=1000)
+def barrier_with_retry() -> None:
+    import torch
+    logging.info("Starting barrier on RANK {}".format(os.environ["RANK"]))
+    torch.distributed.init_process_group()
+    torch.distributed.barrier()
+    torch.distributed.destroy_process_group()
+    logging.info("Finished barrier on RANK {}".format(os.environ["RANK"]))
+
+def main(unused_argv: Sequence[str]) -> None:
+    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
+    parser.add_argument(
+        "--train_data_gcs",
+        type=str,
+        help="Download training data from gcs path",
+    )
+    args, unknown = parser.parse_known_args()
+
+    for key, val in os.environ.items():
+        logging.info("ENV %s=%s", key, val)
+
+    if args.train_data_gcs:
+        local_dir = "/data"
+        if not os.path.exists(local_dir):
+            os.mkdir(local_dir)
+        logging.info("downloading %s to %s...", args.train_data_gcs, local_dir)
+        check_output(
+            [
+                "gcloud",
+                "storage",
+                "cp",
+                "-r",
+                f"{args.train_data_gcs}/*",
+                local_dir,
+            ],
+            stderr=STDOUT,
+        )
+        logging.info("%s downloaded.", args.train_data_gcs)
+
+    primary_node_addr, primary_node_port, node_rank, num_nodes = (
+        cluster_spec.get_cluster_spec()
+    )
+
+    cmd = [
+        "torchrun",
+        "--nproc-per-node=8",
+        f"--nnodes={num_nodes}",
+        f"--node_rank={node_rank}",
+    ]
+    if num_nodes > 1:
+        cmd += [
+            "--max-restarts=3",
+            "--rdzv-backend=static",
+            f'--rdzv_id={os.getenv("CLOUD_ML_JOB_ID", primary_node_port)}',
+            f"--rdzv-endpoint={primary_node_addr}:{primary_node_port}",
+        ]
+    cmd += unknown
+
+    logging.info("launching with cmd: \n%s", " \\\n".join(cmd))
+    barrier_with_retry()
+    run(cmd, stdout=sys.stdout, stderr=sys.stdout, check=True)
+
+
+if __name__ == "__main__":
+    logging.get_absl_handler().python_handler.stream = sys.stdout
+    app.run(
+        main, flags_parser=lambda _args: flags.FLAGS(_args, known_only=True)
+    )
diff --git a/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/scripts/util/__init__.py b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/scripts/util/__init__.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..e69de29bb
diff --git a/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/scripts/util/cluster_spec.py b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/scripts/util/cluster_spec.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..4ef1e2577
--- /dev/null
+++ b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/scripts/util/cluster_spec.py
@@ -0,0 +1,81 @@
+"""Get cluster info from environment variables."""
+
+import dataclasses
+import json
+import os
+
+from absl import logging
+
+
+@dataclasses.dataclass
+class ClusterInfo:
+    """Contains information about the cluster.
+
+    Attributes:
+      primary_node_addr: The address of the primary node.
+      primary_node_port: The port of the primary node.
+      node_rank: The rank of the node.
+      num_nodes: The number of nodes in the cluster.
+    """
+
+    primary_node_addr: str | None = None
+    primary_node_port: str | None = None
+    node_rank: int = 0
+    num_nodes: int = 1
+
+    # Allows unpacking operation like
+    # primary_node_addr, primary_node_port, _, _ = ClusterInfo()
+    # See https://stackoverflow.com/a/70753113
+    def __iter__(self):
+        return iter(dataclasses.astuple(self))
+
+
+def get_cluster_spec() -> ClusterInfo:
+    """Parses CLUSTER_SPEC environment variable and returns the cluster info.
+
+    Returns:
+      A ClusterInfo object.
+    """
+    cluster_spec = os.getenv("CLUSTER_SPEC", None)
+
+    # If CLUSTER_SPEC is not set, use individual vars to construct cluster info.
+    if not cluster_spec:
+        cluster_info = ClusterInfo(
+            primary_node_addr=os.getenv("MASTER_ADDR", None),
+            primary_node_port=os.getenv("MASTER_PORT", None),
+            node_rank=int(os.getenv("RANK", "0")),
+            num_nodes=int(os.getenv("NNODES", "1")),
+        )
+        return cluster_info
+
+    cluster_data = json.loads(cluster_spec)
+    # Get primary node info
+    primary_node = cluster_data["cluster"]["workerpool0"][0]
+    logging.info("primary node: %s", primary_node)
+    primary_node_addr, primary_node_port = primary_node.split(":")
+    logging.info("primary node address: %s", primary_node_addr)
+    logging.info("primary node port: %s", primary_node_port)
+
+    # Determine node rank of this machine
+    workerpool = cluster_data["task"]["type"]
+    if workerpool == "workerpool0":
+        node_rank = 0
+    elif workerpool == "workerpool1":
+        # Add 1 for the primary node, since `index` is the index of workerpool1.
+        node_rank = cluster_data["task"]["index"] + 1
+    else:
+        raise ValueError(
+            "Only workerpool0 and workerpool1 are supported. Unknown workerpool:"
+            f" {workerpool}"
+        )
+    logging.info("node rank: %s", node_rank)
+
+    # Calculate total nodes.
+    num_nodes = 1  # For the primary node.
+    if "workerpool1" in cluster_data["cluster"]:
+        num_nodes += len(cluster_data["cluster"]["workerpool1"])
+    logging.info("num nodes: %s", num_nodes)
+
+    return ClusterInfo(
+        primary_node_addr, primary_node_port, node_rank, num_nodes
+    )
diff --git a/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/scripts/util/cluster_spec_test.py b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/scripts/util/cluster_spec_test.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..2839c69a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/community-content/vertex-distributed-training/a3mega/llama-3-8b-nemo-pretraining/scripts/util/cluster_spec_test.py
@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
+"""Add tests for cluster_spec.py."""
+
+import os
+
+from . import cluster_spec
+
+
+# TODO(styer): Use pytest instead
+class ClusterSpecTest(googletest.TestCase):
+
+    def setUp(self):
+        super().setUp()
+        self.curr_env_var = os.environ.copy()
+
+    def tearDown(self):
+        super().tearDown()
+        os.environ = self.curr_env_var
+
+    def test_get_cluster_spec_from_env_vars(self):
+        os.environ["CLUSTER_SPEC"] = ""
+        os.environ["MASTER_ADDR"] = "127.0.0.1"
+        os.environ["MASTER_PORT"] = "8080"
+        os.environ["RANK"] = "0"
+        os.environ["NNODES"] = "2"
+        cluster_info = cluster_spec.get_cluster_spec()
+        self.assertEqual(cluster_info.primary_node_addr, "127.0.0.1")
+        self.assertEqual(cluster_info.primary_node_port, "8080")
+        self.assertEqual(cluster_info.node_rank, 0)
+        self.assertEqual(cluster_info.num_nodes, 2)
+
+    def test_get_cluster_spec_from_cluster_spec(self):
+        os.environ[
+            "CLUSTER_SPEC"
+        ] = """
+    {
+      "cluster": {
+        "workerpool0": [
+          "127.0.0.1:8080"
+        ],
+        "workerpool1": [
+          "127.0.0.2:8080",
+          "127.0.0.3:8080"
+        ]
+      },
+      "task": {
+        "type": "workerpool1",
+        "index": 0
+      }
+    }
+    """
+        cluster_info = cluster_spec.get_cluster_spec()
+        self.assertEqual(cluster_info.primary_node_addr, "127.0.0.1")
+        self.assertEqual(cluster_info.primary_node_port, "8080")
+        self.assertEqual(cluster_info.node_rank, 1)
+        self.assertEqual(cluster_info.num_nodes, 3)
+
+
+if __name__ == "__main__":
+    googletest.main()