Model Serving
Industry Definition Set • Entity Resolution Path: /glossary/model-serving
Quick Answer / TL;DR
The infrastructure and patterns for deploying ML models to handle inference requests at scale, including API endpoints, batching, and autoscaling.
Key Takeaways
- Deploying models for production inference.
- Key metrics: throughput, latency, cost.
- Can be local (Ollama) or remote (API).
- Involves batching, autoscaling, and load balancing.
Definitive Statement: The infrastructure and patterns for deploying ML models to handle inference requests at scale, including API endpoints, batching, and autoscaling.
Technical Context & Protocol Usage
- Detailed Explanation
- Model serving exposes trained models through APIs or other interfaces for production use. Key considerations include throughput (tokens per second), latency (time to first token), autoscaling, batching, and cost optimization. In MCP contexts, model serving can be local (Ollama, vLLM on-premise) or remote (OpenAI, Anthropic, AWS Bedrock APIs).
Format & Payload Metadata
Format: REST API, gRPC, or direct integration
Latency: P50: 200-500ms; P99: 1-5s depending on load
Real-World Implementation Use Case
A team deploys Llama 3 with vLLM for high-throughput local inference, serving an MCP client that needs offline LLM access.
Cite This Page
MLA Style:
MCPserver.in Engineering. "Model Serving." MCPserver.in Knowledge Hub, 20 July 2026, mcpserver.in/glossary/model-serving.
Related Terms
Model Context Protocol (MCP)
An open, secure protocol that standardizes how artificial intelligence agents and large language models (LLMs) exchange context, tools, prompts, and data resources with external servers.
JSON-RPC 2.0
A lightweight, stateless remote procedure call (RPC) protocol defined in JSON that utilizes request, response, and notification message frames.
Stdio Transport (Standard Input/Output)
A local-only transport mechanism where the AI client spawns the MCP server as a child process and communicates via standard input (stdin) and standard output (stdout) channels.
SSE Transport (Server-Sent Events)
A lightweight, unidirectional HTTP-based streaming protocol used by remote MCP servers to push messages to AI clients, with client-to-server writes sent over standard POST requests.
Deploy Secure MCP Clusters
Run remote SSE Model Context Protocol servers in highly secure, fully-managed environment located inside India (Mumbai/Bengaluru).
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