The LLM Engineer's Handbook: Self-Hosted AI in Production: Professional Techniques for Deploying, Customizing, and Fine-Tuning LLaMA, Mistral, and Ope

By Amaris Quill

Master the complete lifecycle of self-hosted large language model deployments-from infrastructure design to production operations.
In an era where data sovereignty, security compliance, and cost control are paramount, organizations are increasingly moving away from cloud-based API services toward self-hosted AI infrastructure. The LLM Engineer's Handbook is the definitive technical guide for engineers, architects, and technical leaders who need to deploy, optimize, and maintain production-grade LLM systems within their own infrastructure.
This comprehensive resource bridges the gap between theoretical AI concepts and real-world implementation, providing battle-tested strategies for running models like LLaMA, Mistral, and other open-source language models in secure, on-premises environments. Whether you're building HIPAA-compliant healthcare systems, implementing air-gapped deployments for government applications, or optimizing inference costs for high-throughput enterprise services, this book delivers the practical knowledge you need.

What You'll Learn: Infrastructure Design: Plan and build GPU clusters with optimal hardware configurations, network topologies, and cooling systems for cost-effective, high-performance deploymentsSecurity & Compliance: Implement enterprise-grade security frameworks including air-gapped architectures, encryption standards, and compliance tracking for GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC 2Model Optimization: Master quantization techniques (GPTQ, GGUF, AWQ) to reduce memory footprint while preserving model quality, and implement advanced inference optimizations like Flash Attention and speculative decodingProduction Serving: Design robust API gateways, implement load balancing strategies, and deploy inference servers (vLLM, TGI, Triton) that scale from prototype to productionFine-Tuning at Scale: Apply LoRA, QLoRA, and RLHF techniques to customize models for domain-specific applications while managing distributed training infrastructureAdvanced Architectures: Build RAG systems with vector databases, implement multi-model routing strategies, and orchestrate complex agent-based workflowsOperations Excellence: Establish comprehensive monitoring, observability, and incident response procedures to maintain reliable production systemsWho This Book Is For: Machine learning engineers transitioning from cloud APIs to self-hosted infrastructureDevOps and platform engineers building AI infrastructure for their organizationsTechnical architects designing secure, compliant AI systems for regulated industriesData scientists seeking to understand production deployment considerationsEngineering leaders evaluating build-vs-buy decisions for LLM capabilitiesUnlike generic AI tutorials focused on high-level concepts or cloud-hosted solutions, this handbook provides the deep technical detail required for successful self-hosted deployments. Every chapter includes practical implementation guidance, architectural decision frameworks, and real-world trade-off analysis to help you navigate the complexities of production LLM systems.

From selecting the right GPU hardware and configuring quantization parameters to implementing fault-tolerant training pipelines and debugging inference bottlenecks, The LLM Engineer's Handbook equips you with the expertise to build AI systems that meet enterprise requirements for performance, security, and reliability-all while maintaining complete control over your data and infrastructure.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0G5K4FLP7
• ISBN13: 9798277720141
• Release Date: December 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 7.0" x 10.0"