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Workbenches (Jupyter Notebooks)

Workbenches provide managed Jupyter notebook environments for data scientists. Each workbench is a container running JupyterLab with pre-installed ML libraries, persistent storage, and optional GPU access. Workbenches are managed through the RHOAI Dashboard.

Dependencies

Requirement Type Path
RHOAI Operator Operator components/operators/rhoai-operator/
DSC workbenches: Managed DSC component components/instances/rhoai-instance/
DSC dashboard: Managed DSC component Required for the UI to manage workbenches
GPU Infrastructure (optional) Operator + Instance See gpu-infrastructure.md

Workbenches run on CPU by default. GPU access requires the GPU infrastructure stack (NFD + GPU Operator).

Enable It

Workbenches are enabled in the dev and full overlays. The minimal overlay enables Dashboard (the prerequisite).

spec:
  components:
    dashboard:
      managementState: Managed
    workbenches:
      managementState: Managed

Deploy

Workbenches are enabled automatically when the rhoai-instance ArgoCD Application points to the full or dev overlay.

# 1. Install the RHOAI operator
oc apply -k components/operators/rhoai-operator/
oc get csv -A | grep rhods

# 2. Create DSC with workbenches enabled (dev or full overlay)
oc apply -k components/instances/rhoai-instance/overlays/dev/

# 3. Wait for DSC
oc wait --for=jsonpath='{.status.conditions[?(@.type=="Ready")].status}'=True \
  datasciencecluster/default-dsc --timeout=600s

Verify

# Notebook controller should be running
oc get pods -n redhat-ods-applications -l app=notebook-controller

# RHOAI Dashboard should be accessible
oc get route rhods-dashboard -n redhat-ods-applications

Usage

  1. Open the RHOAI Dashboard (route above)
  2. Navigate to Data Science Projects and create a project
  3. Click Create workbench in your project
  4. Select a notebook image (e.g., Standard Data Science, PyTorch, TensorFlow)
  5. Choose container size and optional GPU
  6. The workbench starts as a pod with persistent storage

Pre-built notebook images

RHOAI ships several validated images: - Standard Data Science -- pandas, scikit-learn, matplotlib - PyTorch -- PyTorch + CUDA - TensorFlow -- TensorFlow + CUDA - Minimal -- JupyterLab only

Disable It

Set workbenches.managementState to Removed in the DSC.

Stop running workbenches first:

oc delete notebook --all -A