Azure Functions#

Lithops with Azure Functions as serverless compute backend.

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:
      resource_group: <RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME>
      region: <LOCATION>

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

Summary of configuration keys for Azure#

Azure#

Group

Key

Default

Mandatory

Additional info

azure

resource_group

yes

Name of a resource group, for example: LithopsResourceGroup

azure

region

yes

Location of the resource group, for example: westeurope, westus2, etc

azure

subscription_id

no

Subscription ID from your account. Find it here

Azure Storage#

Group

Key

Default

Mandatory

Additional info

azure_storage

storage_account_name

yes

Storage account name. The name generated in the step 5 of the installation if you followed these instructions

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

no

Name of a resource group, for example: LithopsResourceGroup. Lithops will use the resource_group set under the azure section if it is not set here

azure_functions

region

no

The location of the consumption plan for the runtime. Use az functionapp list-consumption-locations to view the available locations. For example: westeurope, westus2, etc. Lithops will use the region set under the azure section if it is not set here

azure_functions

max_workers

1000

no

Max number of parallel workers. Although Azure limits the number of workers 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 hello -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