Configuring Scaling Groups

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This page covers the configuration specific to scaling groups. These settings work the same way across workloads and have their own pages:

• Resources and GPUs
• Workload Identity
• Tags
• Autoscaling
• Readiness and Shutdown
• Authentication
• Tracing Policy

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Environment, secrets, and volumes

These use the same environment, secret, and volume configuration patterns as sandboxes. The examples below inject an environment variable, a secret, and a volume. Create the secret and the volume first:

$ chalk secret set EXAMPLE_API_TOKEN=replace-with-your-token
$ chalk volume create chalk://example-api-data

Then pass them from the SDK. This example uses the app.py file from the Quick start, saved in the same directory:

import chalkcompute

img = (
    chalkcompute.Image.debian_slim("3.12")
    .pip_install(["flask"])
    .add_local_file("./app.py", "/app/app.py")
    .entrypoint(["python", "/app/app.py"])
)

sg = chalkcompute.ScalingGroup(
    image=img,
    name="api",
    port=8080,
    env={"LOG_LEVEL": "INFO"},
    secrets=[chalkcompute.Secret.from_chalk_env("EXAMPLE_API_TOKEN")],
    volumes=[("example-api-data", "/data")],
    min_replicas=1,
    max_replicas=3,
).deploy()

Or from the CLI. This example serves the volume’s files with Python’s built-in HTTP server:

$ chalk scaling-group create \
    --image=python:3.12-slim \
    --name=api \
    --port=8080 \
    --max-replicas=3 \
    --env=LOG_LEVEL=INFO \
    --secret=EXAMPLE_API_TOKEN \
    --volume=chalk://example-api-data=/data \
    --entrypoint="python,-m,http.server,8080,--directory,/data"

Repeat --env, --secret, and --volume to pass more than one. --env-file reads KEY=VALUE lines from a file. --secret also accepts integration:NAME[:KEY1,KEY2] to inject the secrets of a Chalk integration. Without =/mount/path, --volume mounts the volume at /mnt/<volume-name>.

Secrets are resolved at deploy time and injected as environment variables in every replica. Volume mounts are shared across all replicas, so use them for read-mostly data — if multiple replicas write to the same volume path concurrently, the last writer wins on the next sync.