Use an Istio VirtualService to copy live requests to a candidate model deployment, discard its responses, and compare its errors and latency with the stable version.
PyTorch mmap loading delays access to checkpoint storage. Budget for resident pages, parameter copies, activations and device memory during model startup and serving.
A Kubernetes scratch volume can hold files a model server prepares at startup. Its lifetime makes it a poor home for the only copy of a model or a result.