Azure Container Apps

Lithops with Azure Container Apps as serverless compute backend.

Installation

1. Install Microsoft Azure backend dependencies:

python3 -m pip install lithops[azure]

2. Install Azure CLI

3. Sign in with the Azure CLI:

az login

4. Create a Resource Group and a Storage Account:

   Option 1:

   1. Access to the Azure portal Resource Groups and create a new Resource group named LithopsResourceGroup (or similar) in your preferred region. If you already have a resource group, omit this step.

   2. Access to the Azure portal Storage Accounts and create a new Storage Account with a unique name, for example: lithops0sa25s1. If you already have a storage account, omit this step.

   Option 2:

   1. Create a Resource Group in a specific location. If you already have a resource group, omit this step.

   az group create --name LithopsResourceGroup --location westeurope
   

   2. Create a Storage Account with a unique name. If you already have a storage account, omit this step.

   storage_account_name=lithops$(openssl rand -hex 3)
   echo $storage_account_name
   az storage account create --name $storage_account_name --location westeurope \
        --resource-group LithopsResourceGroup --sku Standard_LRS
   

5. Create a Container App environment named lithops.

az extension add --name containerapp --upgrade
az provider register --namespace Microsoft.App --wait
az provider register --namespace Microsoft.OperationalInsights --wait
az containerapp env create --name lithops --resource-group LithopsResourceGroup --location westeurope

Configuration

1. Access to the Storage Account

2. In the left menu, under the Security + networking section, click on Access Keys and copy the Key 1

3. Edit your lithops config and add the following keys:

  lithops:
      backend : azure_containers

  azure_storage:
      storage_account_name: <STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME>
      storage_account_key: <STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY>

  azure_containers:
      location: <LOCATION>
      resource_group: <RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME>

Summary of configuration keys for Azure

Azure Storage

Group	Key	Default	Mandatory	Additional info
azure_storage	storage_account_name		yes	The name generated in the step 5 of the installation
azure_storage	storage_account_key		yes	An Account Key, found in Storage Accounts > account_name > Security + networking > Access Keys

Azure Containers

Group	Key	Default	Mandatory	Additional info
azure_containers	resource_group		yes	Name of the resource group used in the step 5 of the installation.
azure_containers	location		yes	The location where you created the lithops Container APP environment
azure_containers	environment	lithops	no	The environemnt name you created in the step 5 of the installation
azure_containers	docker_server	index.docker.io	no	Docker server URL
azure_containers	docker_user		no	Docker hub username
azure_containers	docker_password		no	Login to your docker hub account and generate a new access token here
azure_containers	max_workers	1000	no	Max number of parallel workers. Although Azure limits the number of parallel workers to 30, it is convenient to keep this value high
azure_containers	worker_processes	1	no	Number of Lithops processes within a given worker. This can be used to parallelize function activations within a worker
azure_containers	runtime		no	Docker image name
azure_containers	runtime_memory	512	no	Memory limit in MB. Default 512Mi
azure_containers	runtime_timeout	600	no	Runtime timeout in seconds. Default 10 minutes
azure_containers	trigger	pub/sub	no	Currently it supports pub/sub invocation
azure_containers	invoke_pool_threads	32	no	Number of concurrent threads used for invocation

Test Lithops

Once you have your compute and storage backends configured, you can run a hello world function with:

lithops test -b azure_containers -s azure_storage

Viewing the execution logs

You can view the function executions logs in your local machine using the lithops client:

lithops logs poll