Create and deploy virtual machine, deploy resources using Azure Resource Manager templates, and manage and deploy containers

Design considerations for virtual machine creation

• Availability: Service Level Agreement of 99.9% (three-nines)

• VM Size: processing power, memory, and storage capacity

• VM limits: subscription has default quota limits. (Current: 20 VMs per region)

• VM image: az vm image list

• VM disks

  • standard disks: HDD , cost effective dev and test workload
  • Premium disks: SSD , Production workload

• disk storage:

  • Managed disks: managed by Azure , Easy to scale-out , up to 4 terabytes
  • Unmanaged disks: you’re responsible for the storage accounts, fixed-rate limit of 20,000 IO operation per second

Availability Zone

Physically separated within in a region, 3 availability zone per region

• Zonal Service: resource pinned to a specific zone
• Zone-Redundant: Azure automatically replicates across zones

Availability sets

Each availability set can be configured with up to 3 fault domains and 20 update domains.

logical grouping of VMs. protect against hardware failures and updates safely.

• Fault domains: group of underlying hardware that share a common power source and network switch
• Update Domain: ensures that at least one instance of your application always remains running

Virtual machine scale sets

load balanced VMs based on defined schedule or response to demand.

Azure Load Balancer

Layer-4 (TCP, UDP) load balancer , distributing incoming traffic among healthy VMs ( load balancer health probe monitors a given port on each VM )

Azure CLI

Login to azure

az login

create a resource group

az group create --name az204-vm-rg --location "<location>"

create a vm

az vm create \
    --resource-group az204-vm-rg \
    --name az204vm \
    --image UbuntuLTS \
    --generate-ssh-keys \
    --admin-username azureuser \
    --public-ip-sku Standard

open specific port

az vm open-port --port 80 \
--resource-group az204-vm-rg \
--name az204vm

clean up a resource group az group delete --name az204-vm-rg --no-wait

Azure Resource Manager

Azure Resource Manager is the deployment and management service for Azure. It provides a management layer that enables you to create, update, and delete resources in your Azure subscription.

Why ?

• Declarative syntax
• Repeatable results
• Orchestration

Template file

• Parameters - values which used in deployment
• Variables - Define values reused templates (can be combined with parameters value).
• User-defined functions - customized functions.
• Resources - specify resource to be deployed
• Outputs - Return values from the deployed resources.

{
  "$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2019-04-01/deploymentTemplate.json#",
  "contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",
  "parameters": {},
  "functions": [],
  "variables": {},
  "resources": [],
  "outputs": {}
}

Resource Manager converts the template into REST API operations

Deploy template using:

• Azure portal
• Azure CLI
• PowerShell
• REST API
• Button in GitHub repository
• Azure Cloud Shell

conditional deployment

When the value is true, the resource is created. otherwise isn't created. can only be applied to whole resource.

Sample

Conditional deployment doesn't cascade to child resources

{
  "$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2019-04-01/deploymentTemplate.json#",
  "contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",
  "parameters": {
    "storageAccountName": {
      "type": "string"
    },
    "location": {
      "type": "string",
      "defaultValue": "[resourceGroup().location]"
    },
    "newOrExisting": {
      "type": "string",
      "defaultValue": "new",
      "allowedValues": ["new", "existing"]
    }
  },
  "functions": [],
  "resources": [
    {
      "condition": "[equals(parameters('newOrExisting'), 'new')]",
      "type": "Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts",
      "apiVersion": "2019-06-01",
      "name": "[parameters('storageAccountName')]",
      "location": "[parameters('location')]",
      "sku": {
        "name": "Standard_LRS",
        "tier": "Standard"
      },
      "kind": "StorageV2",
      "properties": {
        "accessTier": "Hot"
      }
    }
  ]
}

deployment mode

• Complete mode: deletes resources that exist in the resource group that aren't specified in the template.
• Incremental mode: leaves unchanged resources that exist in the resource group but aren't specified in the template. (default mode is incremental)

Deploy Using Azure CLI

az deployment group create \
  --mode Complete \
  --name ExampleDeployment \
  --resource-group ExampleResourceGroup \
  --template-file storage.json

Azure Container Registry

managed, private Docker registry service based on the open-source Docker Registry

service tiers:

• Basic: Cost-optimized for lower usage scenarios
• Standard: Increased storage and image throughput
• Premium: Geo-replication,content trust

storage capabilities:

• Encryption-at-rest
• Regional storage
• Zone redundancy (premium)
• Scalable storage

ACR Tasks:

• Quick task: docker build and docker push in clouds
• Automatically triggered tasks :
  • source code update az acr task create
  • base image update
  • schedule
• Multi-step task: yaml based config file

Create an Azure Container Registry

create a ACR resource

az acr create --resource-group az204-acr-rg \
    --name <myname> --sku Basic

build docker image using ACR

az acr build --image saeed:v1 --registry <myname> --file Dockerfile .

list repositories az acr repository list --name <myname> --output table

show tags on a specific repo

az acr repository show-tags --name <myname> \
    --repository saeed:v1 --output table

run image in ACR

az acr run --registry <myname> \
    --cmd '$Registry/saeed:v1' /dev/null

Azure Container Instances (ACI)

Offers the fastest and simplest way to run a container in Azure, billed by the second.

container group

Collection of containers that shares lifecycle, resources, local network, and storage volumes. Like POD in Kubernetes only supported in Linux containers.

Deployment

• ARM Template
• YAML file (pass --file filename.yml)

Networking

Containers within the group share an IP and port namespace.

Storage

Supported volumes to mount:

• Azure file share
• Secret
• Empty directory
• Cloned git repo

Create a container

az container create --resource-group rg-test \
    --name mycontainer \
    --image mcr.microsoft.com/azuredocs/aci-helloworld \
    --ports 80 \
    --dns-name-label $DNS_NAME_LABEL --location <myLocation> \

Verify the container is running

az container show --resource-group rg-test \
    --name mycontainer \
    --query "{FQDN:ipAddress.fqdn,ProvisioningState:provisioningState}" \
    --out table \

restart policies

• Always: default
• Never - one container must run within a group
• OnFailure: The containers are run at least once

pass paramater --restart-policy when creating a container

Environment Variables

pass environment variable --environment-variables 'NumWords'='5' 'MinLength'='8'\ when creating a container

Azure file share in Azure Container Instances

fully managed file shares in the cloud that are accessible via the industry standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol

Limitations:

• only available for Linux containers.
• requires the Linux container run as root.
• limited to CIFS support.

deploy container and mount a voulme

az container create \
    --resource-group $ACI_PERS_RESOURCE_GROUP \
    --name hellofiles \
    --image mcr.microsoft.com/azuredocs/aci-hellofiles \
    --dns-name-label aci-demo \
    --ports 80 \
    --azure-file-volume-account-name $ACI_PERS_STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME \
    --azure-file-volume-account-key $STORAGE_KEY \
    --azure-file-volume-share-name $ACI_PERS_SHARE_NAME \
    --azure-file-volume-mount-path /aci/logs/