[AWS] Sagemaker: Add documentation on SageMaker Studio

[btepera]

SageMaker is pushing SageMaker Studio as the preferred way of launching notebooks in a Jupyterlab interface. Currently we document how to run RAPIDS in the legacy Notebooks workflow (which can still be used today) but it would be good to add a guide on how users can leverage RAPIDS in Studio as well.

I spent a little time trying to get RAPIDS working in Studio, as the workflow is slightly different than it is in the classic Notebooks interface. It's not possible to create a Lifecycle Configuration from Studio directly. Instead, what I did was:

1. Create a JupyterLab lifecycle configuration from the main Sagemaker dashboard

• I used a very simple one to test that this works but might be better to include more RAPIDS libraries in the guide:

#!/bin/bash

set -eux

pip install \
    "cudf-cu12==25.10.*" "cuml-cu12==25.10.*"

echo "install completed"

2. Add that lifecycle configuration to a domain

• Environment Configuration > Domains > (choose domain) > Environment
• Attach the relevant lifecycle configuration under "Lifecycle configurations for personal Studio apps"

3. Launch Studio and create a Jupyterlab Space with the corresponding lifecycle configuration selected (it should be available in the dropdown if the above steps were completed successfully)

[ncclementi]

Thanks @btepera this is a helpful guide. We have an issue for this for a while #554

But we've been having issues internally to be able to set up the account to properly write the docs and test this.

@jacobtomlinson any updates on the setup, are we unblocked or still blocked in this aspect?

[jacobtomlinson]

Still blocked on SageMaker Unified Studio #554. We've already spent a significant amount of time on this and I don't think spending more time trying to get Unified Studio set up just for some simple testing is worth the effort.

1. If users are specifically asking for this then we should support it
2. It's likely the existing instructions are close enough

Although I'm not sure if SageMaker Unified Studio is the same thing as SageMaker Studio. @btepera do you have a view on this?

[btepera]

SageMaker Studio and Unified Studio are separate offerings, though the names are quite confusing (and are also both separate from Sagemaker Studio Lab, which no longer appears to be supported).

My understanding is the "original" SageMaker was renamed to SageMaker AI.

Within SageMaker AI there are two ways to access notebooks:

• through the Notebooks instances, which we have documented with RAPIDS 24.12 today
• through SageMaker Studio, which has a full Jupyterlab interface and is what I was proposing we add documentation for with this issue

Separate from SageMaker AI, the "next generation" of SageMaker consists of SageMaker Unified Studio + data governance. It looks like this requires setting up some IAM-based domain but I haven't spent much time trying to make this work. I'm not aware that users have asked for this yet but it would be good to keep tabs on if this is the future of SageMaker.

Ultimately, I think we should document our recommended way for users to use RAPIDS on SageMaker today. If we're blocked on Unified Studio, then updating our docs with instructions for how users can leverage SageMaker Studio (within SageMaker AI) seems like it would accomplish that.

[jacobtomlinson]

s ome IAM-based domain but I haven't spent much time trying to make this work

We have spent a lot of time on this. @rockhowse also helped out. We ran into some issues setting up our NVIDIA SSO with it and it felt like a deep rabbit hole to go down for some simple testing.

updating our docs with instructions for how users can leverage SageMaker Studio (within SageMaker AI) seems like it would accomplish that

Yeah that sounds good to me.