---
title: "AI Training - Job concept"
description: "A job in AI Training is the workload unit submitted to the cluster. A job runs as a Docker container within the OVHcloud infrastructure."
url: https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/public-cloud/ai-machine-learning/ai-training-jobs
lang: en
---
> For AI agents: the complete documentation index is available at https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/llms.txt, the full documentation bundle is available at https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/llms-full.txt.

# AI Training - Job concept

## Definition

A **job** in **AI Training** is the workload unit submitted to the cluster. A **job** runs as a Docker container within the OVHcloud infrastructure.

Each AI Training job is linked to a **Public Cloud** project and specifies a number of resources to use to run the training task along with a Docker image either publicly available, in the **AI Training** shared registry scoped to your project, or the private registry of your choosing that you added. For the latter, see the [OVHcloud documentation on how to add, use, and manage registries](https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/public-cloud/ai-machine-learning/manage-registries.md).

 

## Considerations

**Warning:**

An **AI Training** job runs continuously until manually interrupted by the user or until it is done, unless it exceeds **7 days of running**. It will then be automatically stopped. You can choose to automatically restart it using the `auto-restart` option (set this parameter to `True`). The job will then restart as is.

- [Data](https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/public-cloud/ai-machine-learning/data-concepts-best-practices.md) can be attached to a job to serve either/both as input for your training workload or output (e.g., model weights).
- If you do not customize your resource request, the default requested is 1 GPU. Memory is not customizable.
- [Billing](https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/public-cloud/ai-machine-learning/ai-training-billing-lifecycle.md) for **jobs** is minute-based and starts from the beginning to the end of the job's `RUNNING` status. Each commenced minute is billed completely.
- You can read further on job limitations [here](https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/public-cloud/ai-machine-learning/ai-training-capabilities.md).

 

## Under the hood

**Jobs** in **AI Training** are Docker containers within the OVHcloud infrastructure.

 

## Job lifecycle

During its lifetime, the job will transit between the following states:

**Note:**

Only the `RUNNING` time of the job **is billed**. For more information about jobs billing, refer to this [documentation](https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/public-cloud/ai-machine-learning/ai-training-billing-lifecycle.md).

**Warning:**

**NOTE:** You can only SSH into your job while it is in the `RUNNING` state.

- `QUEUED`: The job run request is about to be processed.
- `INITIALIZING`: The job instance is created, and the data is synchronized from the Object Storage. You can learn more about data synchronization [here](https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/public-cloud/ai-machine-learning/data-concepts-best-practices.md#how-it-works).
- `PENDING`: The job is being started.
- `RUNNING`: The job is running.
- `INTERRUPTING`: The job is still running, but an interruption order was received and is about to be processed.
- `FINALIZING`: The job instance is deleted, and the data is synchronized back to the Object Storage. You can learn more about data synchronization [here](https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/public-cloud/ai-machine-learning/data-concepts-best-practices.md#how-it-works).
- `DONE`: The job ended normally.
- `TIMEOUT`: The job is still running but is about to be interrupted because the timeout was reached.
- `INTERRUPTED`: The job ended and was interrupted.
- `FAILED`: The job ended with an error (e.g., the process in the job finished with a non-0 exit code, the Docker image could not be pulled, etc.).
- `ERROR`: The job ended due to a backend error.

 

## Go further

- You can check the [OVHcloud documentation on how to create a data container](https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/public-cloud/ai-machine-learning/compliance.md).
- You can check the [OVHcloud documentation on how to submit a job](https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/public-cloud/ai-machine-learning/ai-training-submit-job.md).

Browse all the [AI & Machine Learning guides](https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/public-cloud/ai-machine-learning/landing-page-ai-machine-learning.md).

Browse the rest of the [OVHcloud US documentation](https://docs.us.ovhcloud.com/en/index.md) for guides on our other products and services.

Learn more about [AI & Machine Learning](https://us.ovhcloud.com/public-cloud/ai-machine-learning/) on the OVHcloud US website.

If you need training or technical assistance to implement our solutions, contact your sales representative or click on [this link](https://us.ovhcloud.com/professional-services/) to get a quote and ask our Professional Services experts for a custom analysis of your project.