Azure Functions#

Lithops with Azure Functions as serverless compute backend.

Note that currently Azure functions supports Python 3.6, 3.7, 3.8 and 3.9. So you must use one of these versions in your client machine.

Installation#

  1. Install Microsoft Azure backend dependencies:

python3 -m pip install lithops[azure]
  1. Install Azure CLI

  2. Install the Azure Functions core tools

  3. Sign in with the Azure CLI:

az login
  1. 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
    
    1. 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
    

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_functions

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

  azure_functions:
      location: <CONSUMPTION_PLAN_LOCATION>
      resource_group: <RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME>

Summary of configuration keys for Azure#

Azure#

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 Functions#

Group

Key

Default

Mandatory

Additional info

azure_functions

resource_group

yes

Name of the resource group used in the step 5 of the installation.

azure_functions

location

yes

The location of the consumption plan for the runtime. Use az functionapp list-consumption-locations to view the available locations.

azure_functions

max_workers

1000

no

Max number of parallel workers. Altough Azure limits the number of workrs to 200, it is convenient to keep this value high

azure_functions

worker_processes

1

no

Number of Lithops processes within a given worker. This can be used to parallelize function activations within a worker

azure_functions

runtime

no

Runtime name already deployed in the service

azure_functions

runtime_timeout

300

no

Runtime timeout in seconds. Default 5 minutes

azure_functions

trigger

pub/sub

no

One of ‘https’ or ‘pub/sub’

azure_functions

invoke_pool_threads

100

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_functions -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