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Why Inventory Management is Table Stakes for GPU Clouds

In the world of GPU clouds, where speed, scalability, and efficiency are paramount, it’s surprising how many “Neo cloud” providers still manage their infrastructure the old-fashioned way—through spreadsheets.

As laughable as it sounds, this is the harsh reality. Inventory management, one of the most foundational aspects of a reliable cloud platform, is often overlooked or under built. And for modern GPU clouds, that’s a deal breaker.

Inventory Management

When “State of the Art” Is a Spreadsheet

Conversations with newer GPU cloud providers servicing large enterprises reveal shocking truths. Many of them don’t have a live view of their infrastructure inventory. Ask them how many GPUs they have available, how they’re connected, or even their MAC addresses—and they might need a day or two to get back to you.

Why? Because that data is either spread across siloed systems or buried in spreadsheets managed by multiple teams.

This operational bottleneck becomes glaringly obvious during onboarding. Customers are asked to fill out forms and wait days—sometimes weeks—for capacity allocation. Not due to lack of hardware, but because of a fundamental visibility problem. Ten teams must manually update spreadsheets just to provision GPUs. It’s no surprise then that provisioning can take up to two weeks. For a modern GPU cloud, that’s unacceptable.

Inventory Isn’t Just About Counting GPUs

When we talk about inventory, we’re not just referring to how many GPUs are in the rack. True inventory visibility includes things such as:

  • Server location,
  • Memory configuration,
  • Network topology,
  • Infiniband connections,
  • Firewall policies,
  • Tenant-specific access rules, etc.

All of these play a role in dynamically allocating and scaling infrastructure based on tenant needs.

That’s why we believe inventory management must be the source of truth, not just a glorified list.

It should feed directly into automation workflows, enabling real-time decisions on capacity allocation and tenant network setup. From GPU carving to setting up high-speed east-west and north-south networks, every aspect of tenant provisioning hinges on accurate, real-time inventory.

Infrastructure is Dynamic—Your Inventory System Should Be Too

Unlike static environments, modern GPU data centers are in a constant state of flux. Servers are retired, new GPUs are added, switches are reconfigured. Meanwhile, customer demands change on a dime—one day it’s a university requesting 100 GPUs, the next it’s a startup scaling back after a model training cycle.

Your inventory system can’t be a snapshot; it has to be a living, breathing interface between what’s happening in the data center and what the customer experiences on the platform. It’s a broker of trust. Telling a customer their instance is online when it’s not is the quickest way to destroy credibility.

Conclusion: Table Stakes, Not a Nice-to-Have

The expectation today is simple: customers should be able to sign up, swipe a card, and get instant access to compute—just like AWS or Azure. Achieving that level of seamless experience isn’t possible without deep, integrated inventory management. It’s not a backend detail—it’s the backbone of the business.

Inventory management for GPU clouds isn’t an upgrade. It’s table stakes.

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