Alauda AI

MaaS Administrator Guide

This guide explains how platform administrators manage Model as a Service (MaaS): publish model services, create subscriptions, enforce token quotas, configure optional guardrails, and review usage.

For the product overview, see Model as a Service (MaaS). For the developer workflow, see MaaS User Guide.

TOC

Publish platform inference servicesImport an external model servicePublish models from an external serviceCreate a subscriptionConfigure guardrailsEnable guardrailsCreate a guardrail configurationAttach guardrails to a subscription modelReview usage and reportsSubscription management usageUsage report

Publish platform inference services

A model owner publishes a platform-hosted inference service from the service's management page. The service must be an LLMInferenceService.

  1. Open the project or namespace that contains the inference service.
  2. Open the service management page.
  3. From the service actions, select Publish to MaaS.
  4. Enter an optional display name and description.
  5. Click Publish.

Publishing creates a MaaS model reference. The model then appears in the administrator's MaaS → Models → Published Models list and can be added to subscriptions.

Unpublishing removes the model from the MaaS catalog. Existing subscriptions that reference the model no longer resolve it, so remove or replace the model in those subscriptions before unpublishing it.

Import an external model service

Use an external model service when the model is hosted outside the platform or is not represented by an LLMInferenceService.

  1. In the Administrator view, open MaaS → Models.
  2. On the Model Services tab, click Import External Model Service.
  3. Enter a lowercase name for the service.
  4. Enter the provider's OpenAI-compatible endpoint, including its API base path when required. For example, use https://host/v1 when the provider expects /v1 requests.
  5. Enter an upstream API key if the provider requires one. Leave it empty for an endpoint that does not require credentials.
  6. Click Create.

The API key is stored in a Kubernetes Secret and injected by the gateway when it calls the provider. The consumer's MaaS API key and the provider's upstream key are separate credentials: developers receive only the MaaS key.

Publish models from an external service

After importing a service:

  1. On the Model Services tab, open the service action menu.
  2. Select Publish Models.
  3. Add, rename, or remove the model names exposed by that service.
  4. Click Save.

Each published model becomes a separate subscribable model. One external service can therefore expose multiple model names, and those models can use the same endpoint and upstream credential.

The Published Models tab shows the model name, namespace, reference target, and readiness phase. Use the type filter to distinguish External models from models backed by an Inference Service.

Create a subscription

A subscription is the unit of model access and token quota. A user must be a subscriber of a subscription that contains a model before they can call that model.

  1. In the Administrator view, open MaaS → Subscriptions.
  2. Click Create Subscription.
  3. Enter a subscription name.
  4. Add one or more subscribers by username.
  5. Add one or more published models.
  6. For each model, configure at least one token limit and time window.
  7. Optionally add more quota tiers for the same model.
  8. Click Save.
INFO

Users can see a subscription in My Subscriptions only when they are included as subscribers. Add each user's username to Subscribers to grant access to that user. To make the subscription available to all authenticated users, add * as a subscriber. The * value is a wildcard, not a literal username; users still need a valid MaaS API key to call the models.

For each model, the form accepts a limit in millions of tokens and a window such as Minute, Hour, or Day. For example, you can set 100M tokens per hour and 1000M tokens per day. All configured tiers are enforced.

A subscription can contain several models, and each model can have different limits. This lets you provide different access tiers without creating a separate gateway for each model.

The subscription list shows the subscription name, models, subscribers, and current phase. Use the row action menu to view, edit, or delete a subscription.

Configure guardrails

MaaS can optionally check model requests and responses with configured content guardrails.

Enable guardrails

  1. Open MaaS → Guardrails.
  2. Click Edit settings.
  3. Enable guardrails.
  4. Select a failure policy:
    • End request on guardrails failure (FailClosed) rejects or ends the request when the guardrails engine cannot complete the check.
    • Ignore guardrails on failure (FailOpen) allows the request to continue when the guardrails engine fails.
  5. Save the settings.

Disabling guardrails removes the data-plane integration. Guardrail settings that remain on subscriptions do not take effect while the global feature is disabled.

Create a guardrail configuration

  1. On the Guardrails page, click Create Config.
  2. Enter a configuration ID using lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens.
  3. Configure the guardrail models, including model type, model name, and base URL.
  4. Add an optional API key for a guardrail model. Credentials are stored as Kubernetes Secrets and exposed to the guardrails engine through environment variables.
  5. Edit the config.yaml content.
  6. Edit the rails.co content when your configuration requires Colang flows.
  7. Click Save.

A configuration can contain multiple guardrail models, but each model type must be unique within the configuration. The Guardrails list shows whether a configuration is attached to a subscription.

Attach guardrails to a subscription model

When creating or editing a subscription, enable guardrails for a model and select one of the available guardrail configurations. The setting is applied per model, so different models in the same subscription can use different configurations or no guardrails.

Review usage and reports

Subscription management usage

The Subscriptions page shows the subscriptions and their configured limits. Use the subscription's usage view, where available, to review token consumption for the selected subscription and model.

Usage report

Open MaaS → Report to review administrator-level usage:

  1. Select a time range: Last 1 day, Last 7 days, Last 30 days, Last 90 days, or Last 1 year.
  2. Optionally select a subscription.
  3. Search by username.
  4. Click refresh to reload the data.

The report displays:

  • Username
  • Subscription
  • Total tokens
  • Input tokens
  • Cached tokens
  • Output tokens
  • Reasoning tokens

Click Export CSV to export the filtered report. The export dialog lets you group data by subscription, user, API key, or model, and group time by day or month.

Usage data is intended for operational visibility, quota observation, and showback. It is not a billing settlement record.