vLLM provides an HTTP server that implements OpenAI's [Completions API](https://platform.openai.com/docs/api-reference/completions), [Chat API](https://platform.openai.com/docs/api-reference/chat), and more! This functionality lets you serve models and interact with them using an HTTP client.
vLLM provides an HTTP server that implements OpenAI's [Completions API](https://platform.openai.com/docs/api-reference/completions), [Chat API](https://platform.openai.com/docs/api-reference/chat), and more! This functionality lets you serve models and interact with them using an HTTP client.
In your terminal, you can [install](../getting_started/installation.md) vLLM, then start the server with the [`vllm serve`](#vllm-serve) command. (You can also use our [Docker](#deployment-docker) image.)
In your terminal, you can [install](../getting_started/installation.md) vLLM, then start the server with the [`vllm serve`](#serve-args) command. (You can also use our [Docker](#deployment-docker) image.)
```bash
```bash
vllm serve NousResearch/Meta-Llama-3-8B-Instruct --dtype auto --api-key token-abc123
vllm serve NousResearch/Meta-Llama-3-8B-Instruct --dtype auto --api-key token-abc123