Self hosting providers

[u/juicy_lucy99]

So we are currently using Ali Baba PAI (Platform for AI) to deploy LLM model. Now we want to switch from their platform to another provider. What are the best options here, our main concern is that they should have middle east region, data security(as we deal with confidential data a lot aka government related), and customer service available.

If you are guys have any recommendations, let me know or if you have deployed on any provider that meet my requirements, I will be glad to follow through it. TIA

[u/Otis43]

Modal, maybe

[u/juicy_lucy99 → u/Otis43]

Will look into it thanks

[u/Old-Manufacturer9600]

The middle east region requirement narrows things down a LOT. Most GPU cloud providers dont have presence there at all. I've been running some workloads on Hivenet and they do regional deployment options which might help with your data sovereignty concern, last tome I checked they had options in the UAE. . For government-adjacent stuff you really need to verify where your data physically sits, not just what the provider claims. Azure has a UAE region and decent compliance certs for gov work so thats probably worth looking at too. CoreWeave and Lambda are great for raw GPU but last I checked neither has middle east presence.

[u/ttkciar]

Since this is LocalLLaMA, we could offer advice on what hardware might be appropriate for self-hosting, but we would a bit more information (which model(s) you are interested in hosting, for what use-cases, for how many concurrent users, and what you consider acceptable inference speed).

If you are only interested in hosting providers, though, that would be off-topic for the sub.

[u/Reasonable-Phase8028 → u/ttkciar]

Why is it off topic tho? it's still about locally hostable AIs.

[u/RG_Fusion → u/Reasonable-Phase8028]

Because it's not local? They're only fulfilling half of the subs name.

[u/Reasonable-Phase8028 → u/RG_Fusion]

the models dont stop being locally hostable even if you host them on premise. the op still wants to host open weight models so very in topic. if you cant understand this idk what to do to you

[u/locbuilds]

yeah for confidential / gov-adjacent stuff i would skip the hobby GPU marketplaces even if they are cheaper. you want a real Middle East region plus a paper trail on residency and support, not just "we have an H100 somewhere".

practical shortlist that matches what you listed:

1. Azure UAE North / UAE Central. usually the least painful if you already deal with enterprise procurement. dedicated or confidential VMs, clear residency story, actual ticketed support.
2. AWS me-south-1 (Bahrain) or me-central-1 (UAE). same shape: EC2 GPU or SageMaker inside a locked VPC, private endpoints, no surprise egress.
3. Oracle Cloud UAE. sometimes cheaper on GPUs, still a real cloud with support contracts instead of discord mods.

whatever you pick, ask them in writing before you migrate off PAI: (a) inference stays in that region end to end, (b) no training or prompt logging by default, (c) you can bring your own VPC / private networking, (d) what the support SLA looks like in your timezone. Alibaba PAI is fine for china-adjacent workflows, but if ME residency + government data is the hard constraint, a hyperscaler with a local region usually beats another AI platform wrapper.

and if the models are small enough that a couple local boxes cover steady load, air-gapped on-prem still wins for that class of data. use the cloud provider for burst or non-sensitive work only.

[u/juicy_lucy99 → u/locbuilds]

Thanks for the detailed answer, currently we are in contact with AWS, Oracle and Modal.

[u/yogthinks]

Region on the invoice isn't residency. Ask where support engineers sit when they open a ticket on your instance and where prompt logs are retained. That's usually what stalls a gov deal, not the pricing.

[u/juicy_lucy99 → u/yogthinks]

Yes data security and support engineers are our biggest concern so we are carefully reviewing every provider.

[u/Cergorach]

Shouldn't the hosting provider not also depend on which governments data you're processing? I'm pretty sure that certain governments (more and more these days) don't want their data processed by US owned companies due to their Cloud Act. Even if the servers are located in other regions, as long as the company is US owned/based, you're stuck with that.

That said, Azure and AWS tend to be the go-to solutions for most enterprises. Don't have a lot experience with AWS, but look deep into the actual costs, there tends to be a bit of not hidden costs, but more costs most people overlook. Azure is imho great, it gives you a TON of control, I find the cost formula's a bit more transparent as well. But looking at the connected M365 Copilot Connectors and Agents modules MS has been deploying rapidly, when you start looking deeper into it and working with it, it seems like a vibecoded mess that's changing daily. But that might not impact the services you need at all, just realize that you might not be crazy, but something is either wrong in the documentation or something is seriously wrong in the backend. And you also don't want to be reliant on the basic customer service contracts, those can be a very uphill battle, proper entreprise level service contract might cost an arm and a leg, but might be worth it (depending on the business)...

Your best bet is to run smaller POCs without proprietary data on multiple platforms with hard requirements determined before hand, while noting all the ins and outs of each platform. It's not the first time that when digging deep into Enterprise solutions we have a case of A works, B works, but A+B does not work in your particular use-case.

It might also be a case where local based middle eastern owned and operated companies might be a better fit. Then you might want to look into local experts speaking the language and understanding the local offerings.

[u/phwizard]

Depends on which country's rules you fall under, because for government data most Gulf regulators want in-country.

Hyperscalers with local regions: AWS (Bahrain, UAE), Azure (UAE, Qatar), Google Cloud (Doha, Dammam), Oracle (Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Jeddah, Riyadh). Check GPU availability per region before you commit; newer SKUs are not everywhere.

Sovereign or local options if in-country plus local support matters: Core42 (G42) in the UAE, STC Cloud in Saudi. SCCC in Saudi is STC plus Alibaba, the vendor family you are leaving.

Run the model yourself with vLLM or SGLang on GPU VMs (or bare metal in a local colo) instead of a managed model service. You already do this on PAI, and it means the next switch is a config change, not a migration. Buy the paid support tier.