Azure Virtual Machines#

The Azure Virtual Machines client of Lithops can provide a truely serverless user experience on top of Azure VMs where Lithops creates new Virtual Machines (VMs) dynamically in runtime and scale Lithops jobs against them. Alternatively Lithops can start and stop an existing VM instances.

Installation#

  1. Install Microsoft Azure backend dependencies:

python3 -m pip install lithops[azure]

  1. Install Azure CLI

  2. 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

Choose an operating system image for the VM#

  • Option 1: By default, Lithops uses an Ubuntu 22.04 image. In this case, no further action is required and you can continue to the next step. Lithops will install all required dependencies in the VM by itself. Notice this can consume about 3 min to complete all installations.

  • Option 2: Alternatively, you can use a pre-built custom image that will greatly improve VM creation time for Lithops jobs. To benefit from this approach, navigate to runtime/azure_vms, and follow the instructions.

Lithops and the VM consume mode#

In this mode, Lithops can start and stop an existing VM, and deploy an entire job to that VM. The partition logic in this scenario is different from the create/reuse modes, since the entire job is executed in the same VM.

Lithops configuration for the consume mode#

Edit your lithops config and add the relevant keys:

    lithops:
        backend: azure_vms

    azure:
        resource_group: <RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME>
        region: <LOCATION>
        subscription_id: <SUBSCRIPTION_ID>

    azure_vms:
        exec_mode: consume
        instance_name: <VM_NAME>
        ssh_username: <SSH_USERNAME>
        ssh_key_filename: <SSH_KEY_PATH>

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

yes

Subscription ID from your account. Find it here

Azure VMs - Consume Mode#

Group

Key

Default

Mandatory

Additional info

azure_vms

instance_name

yes

virtual server instance Name. The instance must exists in your resource group

azure_vms

ssh_username

ubuntu

yes

Username to access the VM. It will use ubuntu if not provided

azure_vms

ssh_key_filename

~/.ssh/id_rsa

yes

Path to the ssh key file provided to create the VM. It will use the default path if not provided

azure_vms

region

no

Location of the resource group, for example: westeurope, westus2, etc. Lithops will use the region set under the azure section if it is not set here

azure_vms

worker_processes

AUTO

no

Number of Lithops processes within a given worker. This is used to parallelize function activations within the worker. By default it detects the amount of CPUs in the VM

azure_vms

runtime

python3

no

Runtime name to run the functions. Can be a container image name. If not set Lithops will use the defeuv python3 interpreter of the VM

azure_vms

auto_dismantle

True

no

If False then the VM is not stopped automatically.

azure_vms

soft_dismantle_timeout

300

no

Time in seconds to stop the VM instance after a job completed its execution

azure_vms

hard_dismantle_timeout

3600

no

Time in seconds to stop the VM instance after a job started its execution

Lithops and the VM auto create and reuse modes#

In the create mode, Lithops will automatically create new worker VM instances in runtime, scale Lithops job against generated VMs, and automatically delete the VMs when the job is completed. Alternatively, you can set the reuse mode to keep running the started worker VMs, and reuse them for further executions. In the reuse mode, Lithops checks all the available worker VMs and start new workers only if necessary.

Lithops configuration for the create or reuse modes#

Edit your lithops config and add the relevant keys:

    lithops:
        backend: azure_vms

    azure:
        resource_group: <RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME>
        region: <LOCATION>
        subscription_id: <SUBSCRIPTION_ID>

    azure_vms:
        exec_mode: reuse

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

yes

Subscription ID from your account. Find it here

Azure VMs - Create and Reuse Modes#

Group

Key

Default

Mandatory

Additional info

azure_vms

region

no

Azure location for deploying the VMS. For example: westeurope, westus2, etc. Lithops will use the region set under the azure section if it is not set here

azure_vms

image_id

Canonical:0001-com-ubuntu-server-jammy:22_04-lts-gen2:latest

no

Image ID. ARM resource identifier

azure_vms

ssh_username

ubuntu

no

Username to access the VM

azure_vms

ssh_password

no

Password for accessing the worker VMs. If not provided, it is created randomly

azure_vms

ssh_key_filename

~/.ssh/id_rsa

no

Path to the ssh key file provided to access the VPC. It will use the default path if not provided

azure_vms

master_instance_type

Standard_B1s

no

Profile name for the master VM

azure_vms

worker_instance_type

Standard_B2s

no

Profile name for the worker VMs

azure_vms

delete_on_dismantle

False

no

Delete the worker VMs when they are stopped. Master VM is never deleted when stopped. True is NOT YET SUPPORTED

azure_vms

max_workers

100

no

Max number of workers per FunctionExecutor()

azure_vms

worker_processes

2

no

Number of Lithops processes within a given worker. This can be used to parallelize function activations within a worker. It is recommendable to set this value to the same number of CPUs of a worker VM.

azure_vms

runtime

python3

no

Runtime name to run the functions. Can be a container image name. If not set Lithops will use the default python3 interpreter of the VM

azure_vms

auto_dismantle

True

no

If False then the VM is not stopped automatically.

azure_vms

soft_dismantle_timeout

300

no

Time in seconds to stop the VM instance after a job completed its execution

azure_vms

hard_dismantle_timeout

3600

no

Time in seconds to stop the VM instance after a job started its execution

azure_vms

exec_mode

reuse

no

One of: consume, create or reuse. If set to create, Lithops will automatically create new VMs for each map() call based on the number of elements in iterdata. If set to reuse will try to reuse running workers if exist

Test Lithops#

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

lithops hello -b azure_vms -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

VM Management#

Lithops for Azure VMs follows a Mater-Worker architecrue (1:N).

All the VMs, including the master VM, are automatically stopped after a configurable timeout (see hard/soft dismantle timeouts).

You can login to the master VM and get a live ssh connection with:

lithops attach -b azure_vms

The master and worker VMs contain the Lithops service logs in /tmp/lithops-root/*-service.log

To list all the available workers in the current moment, use the next command:

lithops worker list -b azure_vms

You can also list all the submitted jobs with:

lithops job list -b azure_vms

You can delete all the workers with:

lithops clean -b azure_vms -s azure_storage

You can delete all the workers including the Master VM with the --all flag:

lithops clean -b azure_vms -s azure_storage --all