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Manjula Rajamani for itTrident Software Services

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Deploying Node-Red on Azure Container Instance

This guide provides instructions for deploying the Node-Red application on the Azure platform, utilizing Azure Container Instances, Azure Container Registry, and Azure Storage Account.

What is Azure Container Instance?
Azure Container Instances (ACI) is a managed service that allows you to run containers directly on the Microsoft Azure public cloud, without requiring the use of virtual machines (VMs)

For more information about Azure Container Instances, check out the official documentation at this link: Azure Container Instances Documentation.

What is Azure Container Registry?
Azure Container Registry is a private registry service for building, storing, and managing container images and related artifacts

For more information about Azure Container Registry, check out the official documentation at this link: Azure Container Registry Documentation.

What is an Azure Storage account?
The Azure Storage platform is Microsoft's cloud storage solution for modern data storage scenarios. Azure Storage offers highly available, massively scalable, durable, and secure storage for a variety of data objects in the cloud. Azure Storage data objects are accessible from anywhere in the world over HTTP or HTTPS via a REST API.

For more information about the Azure Storage account, check out the official documentation at this link: Azure Storage account Documentation.

Startup:
Before starting, ensure that you have an Azure account with an active subscription

Step 1:
Login into your Azure account

 az login
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Step 2:

  • Create a container registry and store the Node-RED image in the container registry

  • As of Node-RED 1.0, the repository on Docker Hub was renamed to nodered/node-red.

  • Log in to a registry using Azure CLI

 az acr login --name myregistry docker login myregistry.azurecr.io
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If you are unfamiliar with creating an Azure Container Registry (ACR), you can refer to the following link for step-by-step instructions using the Azure portal: Get Started with Azure Container Registry

Step 3:

Create an Azure file share:
Run the following script to create a storage account to host the file share, and the share itself. The storage account name must be globally unique, so the script adds a random value to the base string.

 # Change these parameters as needed RESOURCE_GROUP=myResourceGroup STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME=storageaccount$RANDOM LOCATION=eastus FILE_SHARE_NAME=node-red-share IMAGE=testingregistrydevops.azurecr.io/node-red:latest ACI_NAME=node-red # Create the storage account with the parameters az storage account create \ --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \ --name $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME \ --location $LOCATION \ --sku Standard_LRS # Create the file share az storage share-rm create \ --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \ --storage-account $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME \ --name $FILE_SHARE_NAME \ --quota 1024 \ --enabled-protocols SMB \ --output table
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Step 4:

Get storage credentials:
To mount an Azure file share as a volume in Azure Container Instances, you need three values: the storage account name, the share name, and the storage access key.

  • Storage account name - If you used the preceding script, the storage account name was stored in the $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME variable. To see the account name, type:
 echo $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME
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  • Share name- This value is already known (defined as node-red-share in the preceding script). To see the file share name 
 echo $FILE_SHARE_NAME
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  • Storage account key - This value can be found using the following command:
 STORAGE_KEY=$(az storage account keys list --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --account-name $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME --query "[0].value" --output tsv) echo $STORAGE_KEY
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Step 5:

Deploy container and mount volume - CLI:
To mount an Azure file share as a volume in a container by using the Azure CLI, specify the share and volume mount point when you create the container with az container create. If you followed the previous steps, you can mount the share you created earlier by using the following command to create a container:

 az container create \ --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \ --name $ACI_NAME \ --image $IMAGE \ --dns-name-label unique-acidemo-label \ --ports 1880 \ --azure-file-volume-account-name $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME \ --azure-file-volume-account-key $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY \ --azure-file-volume-share-name $FILE_SHARE_NAME \ --azure-file-volume-mount-path /aci/logs/
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The --dns-name-label value must be unique within the Azure region where you create the container instance

Using Bash
You can combine the above commands and execute the bash script to create an Azure Container Instance for Node-RED.
Here is the bash script for Node-RED

 #!/usr/bin/env bash RESOURCE_GROUP=MyResourceGroup STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME=storageaccount$RANDOM LOCATION=eastus FILE_SHARE_NAME=node-red-share IMAGE=testingregistrydevops.azurecr.io/node-red:latest ACI_NAME=node-red # Function to handle errors handle_error() { echo "Error: $1" >&2 exit 1 } # Azure Login az login || handle_error "Failed to login to Azure" # ACR Login az acr login --name testingregistrydevops.azurecr.io || handle_error "Failed to login to ACR" # Check if Resource Group exists if az group show --name $RESOURCE_GROUP &>/dev/null; then echo "Resource group '$RESOURCE_GROUP' already exists." else # Creating Resource Group az group create --name $RESOURCE_GROUP --location $LOCATION || handle_error "Failed to create resource group" echo "Resource group '$RESOURCE_GROUP' created." fi # Check if the Storage Account exists if az storage account show --name $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP &>/dev/null; then echo "Storage account '$STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME' already exists." else # Creating Storage Account az storage account create \ --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \ --name $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME \ --location $LOCATION \ --sku Standard_LRS || handle_error "Failed to create storage account" echo "Storage account '$STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME' created." fi # Creating File Share echo "Creating file share '$FILE_SHARE_NAME'..." if az storage share-rm create \ --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \ --storage-account $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME \ --name $FILE_SHARE_NAME \ --quota 1024 \ --enabled-protocols SMB \ --output table &>/dev/null; then echo "File share '$FILE_SHARE_NAME' created successfully." else handle_error "Failed to create file share '$FILE_SHARE_NAME'" fi # Fetch Storage Account Key STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY=$(az storage account keys list --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --account-name $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME --query "[0].value" --output tsv) echo $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY # Creating Azure Container Instance for Node-Red if az container show --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --name $ACI_NAME &>/dev/null; then echo "Azure Container Instance '$ACI_NAME' already exists." else # Creating Azure Container Instance for Node-Red az container create \ --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \ --name $ACI_NAME \ --image $IMAGE \ --dns-name-label unique-acidemo-label \ --ports 1880 \ --azure-file-volume-account-name $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME \ --azure-file-volume-account-key $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY \ --azure-file-volume-share-name $FILE_SHARE_NAME \ --azure-file-volume-mount-path /aci/logs/ || handle_error "Failed to create container instance" echo "Azure Container Instance '$ACI_NAME' created." fi
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After executing the file, you can make the application accessible using the public IP or Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) of the Azure Container Instance.

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Additionally, you can verify whether the file share is properly mounted using Azure Container Instances (ACI)

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