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Azure Deployment

Learn how to deploy to the cloud with Azure.

Before You Start #

This guide assumes that you have already tried Pachyderm locally and have all of the following installed:


1. Create an AKS Cluster #

You can deploy Kubernetes on Azure by following the official Azure Kubernetes Service documentation, use the quickstart walkthrough, or follow the steps in this section.

At a minimum, you will need to specify the parameters below:

VariableDescription
RESOURCE_GROUPA unique name for the resource group where Pachyderm is deployed. For example, pach-resource-group.
LOCATIONAn Azure availability zone where AKS is available. For example, centralus.
NODE_SIZEThe size of the Kubernetes virtual machine (VM) instances. To avoid performance issues, Pachyderm recommends that you set this value to at least Standard_DS4_v2 which gives you 8 CPUs, 28 Gib of Memory, 56 Gib SSD.

In any case, use VMs that support premium storage. See Azure VM sizes for details around which sizes support Premium storage.
CLUSTER_NAMEA unique name for the Pachyderm cluster. For example, pach-aks-cluster.

You can choose to follow the guided steps in Azure Service Portal’s Kubernetes Services or use Azure CLI.

  1. Log in to Azure:

    az login

    This command opens a browser window. Log in with your Azure credentials. Resources can now be provisioned on the Azure subscription linked to your account.

  2. Create an Azure resource group or retrieve an existing group.

    az group create --name ${RESOURCE_GROUP} --location ${LOCATION}

    Example:

    az group create --name test-group --location centralus

    System Response:

    {
      "id": "/subscriptions/6c9f2e1e-0eba-4421-b4cc-172f959ee110/resourceGroups/pach-resource-group",
      "location": "centralus",
      "managedBy": null,
      "name": "pach-resource-group",
      "properties": {
        "provisioningState": "Succeeded"
      },
      "tags": null,
      "type": null
    }
  3. Create an AKS cluster in the resource group/location:

    For more configuration options: Find the list of all available flags of the az aks create command.

    az aks create --resource-group ${RESOURCE_GROUP} --name ${CLUSTER_NAME} --node-vm-size ${NODE_SIZE} --node-count <node_pool_count> --location ${LOCATION}

    Example:

    az aks create --resource-group test-group --name test-cluster --generate-ssh-keys --node-vm-size Standard_DS4_v2 --location centralus
  4. Confirm the version of the Kubernetes server by running kubectl version.

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“See Also:” - Azure Virtual Machine sizes

Once your Kubernetes cluster is up, and your infrastructure configured, you are ready to prepare for the installation of Pachyderm. Some of the steps below will require you to keep updating the values.yaml started during the setup of the recommended infrastructure:

2. Create a Storage Container #

Pachyderm needs an Azure Storage Container (Object store) to store your data.

To access your data, Pachyderm uses a Storage Account with permissioned access to your desired container. You can either use an existing account or create a new one in your default subscription, then use the JSON key associated with the account and pass it on to Pachyderm.

  1. Set up the following variables:

    • STORAGE_ACCOUNT: The name of the storage account where you store your data.
    • CONTAINER_NAME: The name of the Azure blob container where you store your data.
  2. Create an Azure storage account:

    az storage account create \
      --resource-group="${RESOURCE_GROUP}" \
      --location="${LOCATION}" \
      --sku=Premium_LRS \
      --name="${STORAGE_ACCOUNT}" \
      --kind=BlockBlobStorage

    System response:

    {
      "accessTier": null,
      "creationTime": "2019-06-20T16:05:55.616832+00:00",
      "customDomain": null,
      "enableAzureFilesAadIntegration": null,
      "enableHttpsTrafficOnly": false,
      "encryption": {
        "keySource": "Microsoft.Storage",
        "keyVaultProperties": null,
        "services": {
          "blob": {
            "enabled": true,
      ...

    Make sure that you set Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) to Premium_LRS and the kind parameter is set to BlockBlobStorage. This configuration results in a storage that uses SSDs rather than standard Hard Disk Drives (HDD). If you set this parameter to an HDD-based storage option, your Pachyderm cluster will be too slow and might malfunction.

  3. Verify that your storage account has been successfully created:

    az storage account list
  4. Obtain the key for the storage account (STORAGE_ACCOUNT) and the resource group to be used to deploy Pachyderm:

    STORAGE_KEY="$(az storage account keys list \
                  --account-name="${STORAGE_ACCOUNT}" \
                  --resource-group="${RESOURCE_GROUP}" \
                  --output=json \
                  | jq '.[0].value' -r
                )"
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Find the generated key in the Storage accounts > Access keys section in the Azure Portal or by running the following command az storage account keys list --account-name=${STORAGE_ACCOUNT}.

  1. Create a new storage container within your storage account:

    az storage container create --name ${CONTAINER_NAME} \
              --account-name ${STORAGE_ACCOUNT} \
              --account-key "${STORAGE_KEY}"

3. Create a Values.yaml #

Version:

4. Configure Helm #

Run the following to add the Pachyderm repo to Helm:

helm repo add pachyderm https://helm.pachyderm.com
helm repo update
helm install pachyderm pachyderm/pachyderm -f my_pachyderm_values.yaml 

5. Verify Installation #

  1. In a new terminal, run the following command to check the status of your pods:
kubectl get pods
NAME                                           READY   STATUS      RESTARTS   AGE
pod/console-5b67678df6-s4d8c                   1/1     Running     0          2m8s
pod/etcd-0                                     1/1     Running     0          2m8s
pod/pachd-c5848b5c7-zwb8p                      1/1     Running     0          2m8s
pod/pg-bouncer-7b855cb797-jqqpx                1/1     Running     0          2m8s
pod/postgres-0                                 1/1     Running     0          2m8s
  1. Re-run this command after a few minutes if pachd is not ready.

6. Connect to Cluster #

You’ll need your organization’s cluster URL (proxy.host) value to connect.

  1. Run the following command to get your cluster URL:
kubectl get services | grep pachyderm-proxy | awk '{print $4}'
  1. Connect to your cluster:

    Method: