Vast.ai ​

Probably the simplest way to get Volta up and running within a few minutes in the cloud.

Step 1: Create an account ​

Create an account on Vast.ai. You will get few cents as credit when you add your card details (good for about half an hour of instance time). I would recommend only using Credit system in case you accidentally leave your instance running for too long.

Step 2: Create an instance ​

Click on this ->link<- to open a new window that should have Volta pre-selected as the template. I would recommend selecting a server with decent download speed.

Step 3: Wait for the instance to be ready and connect to it ​

Once you have created the instance, you should see it on the instances page. Wait for the instance to be ready. This should take about 5 minutes (on a decent internet connection).

Click the Open button to connect to the instance. This will open a new tab with Volta (might take about 30s to load properly - just be patient and reload the page if it doesn't load). You can now use Volta as you would on your local machine.

Step 4: Stop the instance ​

Once you are done using the instance, click the Delete button to get rid of the instance (mark 4 on the image above). This will stop the billing for the instance. You can start the instance again by following the steps above again.

You can technically stop the instance - but you will be billed for the storage - so it is recommended to delete the instance.

Syncing data between your instances ​

Vast allows you to connect your cloud buckets to the instance to be used as volumes. This is a great way to sync data between your local machine and the instance. You can find more information about this here.

I personally do not use it as I do not care about outputs that I generate for testing but you might find it useful.