Azure¶

For a quick test installation of Pachyderm on Azure (suitable for development), jump to our Quickstart page.

The following section walks you through deploying a Pachyderm cluster on Microsoft® Azure® Kubernetes Service environment (AKS).

In particular, you will:

1. Install Prerequisites
2. Deploy Kubernetes
3. Create an Azure Storage Container For Your Data
4. Persistent Volumes Creation
5. Create an Azure Managed PostgreSQL Server Database
6. Deploy Pachyderm
7. Have 'pachctl' and your Cluster Communicate
8. Check That Your Cluster Is Up And Running
9. (Optional) Install JupyterHub and Pachyderm Mount Extension to experiment with your data in Pachyderm from your Notebook cells.

1. Install Prerequisites¶

Before your start creating your cluster, install the following clients on your machine. If not explicitly specified, use the latest available version of the components listed below.

• Azure CLI 2.0.1 or later
• jq
• kubectl
• pachctl

2. Deploy Kubernetes¶

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:

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.

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:

3. Create an Azure Storage Container For Your Data¶

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.

To create a new storage account, follow the steps below:

• 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.

• 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.

• Verify that your storage account has been successfully created:

  az storage account list
  

• 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
              )"
  

• Create a new storage container within your storage account:

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

  4. Persistent Volumes Creation¶

etcd and PostgreSQL (metadata storage) each claim the creation of a pv.

If you plan to deploy Pachyderm with its default bundled PostgreSQL instance, read the warning below and jump to the deployment section:

If you plan to deploy a managed PostgreSQL instance (Recommended in production), read the following section.

5. Create an Azure Managed PostgreSQL Server Database¶

By default, Pachyderm runs with a bundled version of PostgreSQL. For production environments, we strongly recommend that you disable the bundled version and use a PostgreSQL Server instance.

This section will provide guidance on the configuration settings you will need to:

• Create an environment to run your Azure PostgreSQL Server databases.
• Create two databases (pachyderm and dex).
• Update your values.yaml to turn off the installation of the bundled postgreSQL and provide your new instance information.

Create A PostgreSQL Server Instance¶¶

In the Azure console, choose the Azure Database for PostgreSQL servers service. You will be asked to pick your server type: Single Server or Hyperscale (for multi-tenant applications), then configure your DB instance as follows.

You are ready to create your instance.

az postgres server create \
    --resource-group <your_resource_group> \
    --name <your_server_name>  \
    --location westus \
    --sku-name GP_Gen5_2 \
    --admin-user <server_admin_username> \
    --admin-password <server_admin_password> \
    --ssl-enforcement Disabled \
    --version 11

Once created, go back to your newly created database, and:

• Open the access to your instance:

Alternativelly, in the Connection Security of your newly created server, Allow access to Azure services (This is equivalent to running az postgres server firewall-rule create --server-name <your_server_name> --resource-group <your_resource_group> --name AllowAllAzureIps --start-ip-address 0.0.0.0 --end-ip-address 0.0.0.0).

• In the Essentials page of your instance, find the full server name and admin username that will be required in your values.yaml.

Create Your Databases¶

After the instance is created, those two commands create the databases that pachyderm uses.

az postgres db create -g <your_group> -s <server_name> -n pachyderm
az postgres db create -g <your_group> -s <server_name> -n dex

Pachyderm will use the same user to connect to pachyderm as well as to dex.

Update your values.yaml¶

Once your databases have been created, add the following fields to your Helm values:

global:
  postgresql:
    postgresqlUsername: "see admin username above"
    postgresqlPassword: "password"
    # The server name of the instance
    postgresqlDatabase: "pachyderm"
    # The postgresql database host to connect to. 
    postgresqlHost: "see server name above"
    # The postgresql database port to connect to. Defaults to postgres server in subchart
    postgresqlPort: "5432"

postgresql:
  # turns off the install of the bundled postgres.
  # If not using the built in Postgres, you must specify a Postgresql
  # database server to connect to in global.postgresql
  enabled: false

6. Deploy Pachyderm¶

You have set up your infrastructure, created your data container and a Managed PostgreSQL instance, and granted your cluster access to both: you can now finalize your values.yaml and deploy Pachyderm.

Update Your Values.yaml¶

If you have previously tried to run Pachyderm locally, make sure that you are using the right Kubernetes context first.

1. Verify cluster context:

   kubectl config current-context
   

   This command should return the name of your Kubernetes cluster that runs on Azure.

   If you have a different context displayed, configure kubectl to use your Azure configuration:

   az aks get-credentials --resource-group ${RESOURCE_GROUP} --name ${CLUSTER_NAME}
   

   System Response:

   Merged "${CLUSTER_NAME}" as current context in /Users/test-user/.kube/config
   

2. Update your values.yaml

   Update your values.yaml with your container name (see example of values.yaml here) or use our minimal example below.

   deployTarget: "MICROSOFT"
   pachd:
     storage:
       microsoft:
         # storage container name
         container: "container_name"
         # storage account name
         id: "AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE"
         # storage account key
         secret: "wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY"
     externalService:
       enabled: true
   global:
     postgresql:
       postgresqlUsername: "see admin username above"
       postgresqlPassword: "password"
       # The server name of the instance
       postgresqlDatabase: "pachyderm"
       # The postgresql database host to connect to. 
       postgresqlHost: "see server name above"
       # The postgresql database port to connect to. Defaults to postgres server in subchart
       postgresqlPort: "5432"
   postgresql:
     # turns off the install of the bundled postgres.
     # If not using the built in Postgres, you must specify a Postgresql
     # database server to connect to in global.postgresql
     enabled: false
   

   Check the list of all available helm values at your disposal in our reference documentation or on Github.

Deploy Pachyderm On The Kubernetes Cluster¶

• Now you can deploy a Pachyderm cluster by running this command:

  $ helm repo add pach https://helm.pachyderm.com
  $ helm repo update
  $ helm install pachd -f values.yaml pach/pachyderm --version <version-of-the-chart>
  

  System Response:

  NAME: pachd
  LAST DEPLOYED: Mon Jul 12 18:28:59 2021
  NAMESPACE: default
  STATUS: deployed
  REVISION: 1
  

  Refer to our generic Helm documentation for more information on how to select your chart version.

  Pachyderm pulls containers from DockerHub. It might take some time before the pachd pods start. You can check the status of the deployment by periodically running kubectl get all.

  When pachyderm is up and running, get the information about the pods:

  kubectl get pods
  

  Once the pods are up, you should see a pod for pachd running (alongside etcd, pg-bouncer, postgres, or console, depending on your installation).

  System Response:

  NAME                      READY     STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
  pachd-1971105989-mjn61    1/1       Running   0          54m
  ...
  

  Note: Sometimes Kubernetes tries to start pachd nodes before the etcd nodes are ready which might result in the pachd nodes restarting. You can safely ignore those restarts.

• Finally, make sure that pachctl talks with your cluster.

7. Have 'pachctl' And Your Cluster Communicate¶

Assuming your pachd is running as shown above, make sure that pachctl can talk to the cluster.

If you are exposing your cluster publicly: 1. Retrieve the external IP address of your TCP load balancer or your domain name:

 ```shell
 kubectl get services | grep pachd-lb | awk '{print $4}'
 ```

1. Update the context of your cluster with their direct url, using the external IP address/domain name above:

   echo '{"pachd_address": "grpc://<external-IP-address-or-domain-name>:30650"}' | pachctl config set context "<your-cluster-context-name>" --overwrite
   

   pachctl config set active-context "<your-cluster-context-name>"
   

2. Check that your are using the right context:

   $ pachctl config get active-context
   

   Your cluster context name should show up.

If you're not exposing pachd publicly, you can run:

# Background this process because it blocks.
$ pachctl port-forward

8. Check That Your Cluster Is Up And Running¶

$ pachctl version

System Response:

COMPONENT           VERSION
pachctl             2.2.0
pachd               2.2.0

9. NOTEBOOKS USERS: Install Pachyderm JupyterLab Mount Extension¶

Once your cluster is up and running, you can helm install JupyterHub on your Pachyderm cluster and experiment with your data in Pachyderm from your Notebook cells.

Check out our JupyterHub and Pachyderm Mount Extension page for installation instructions.

Use Pachyderm's default image and values.yaml jupyterhub-ext-values.yaml or follow the instructions to update your own.