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docs-getting-started
Running on Microsoft Azure
azure
toc-user-guide.html
/docs/platforms/azure

This guide takes you through the steps to get Node-RED running on an Microsoft Azure environment.

There are two approaches:

  1. Running on the Azure Virtual Machine instance (VM)
  2. Running on Azure Container instance (ACI)

Prerequisites

  • Before starting, ensure that you have an Azure account with an active subscription
  • Log in to the Azure console

Note: As of Node-RED 1.0, the repository on Docker Hub was renamed to nodered/node-red.

Running on Azure Virtual Machine instance

Create the base image

  1. Log in to the Azure console

  2. Click to add a New ... Virtual Machine

  3. In the list of Virtual Machines, select Ubuntu Server, then click 'Create'

  4. Give your machine a name, the username you want to use and the authentication details you want to use to access the instance

  5. Choose the Size of your instance. Remember that node.js is single-threaded so there's no benefit to picking a size with multiple cores for a simple node-red instance. A1 Basic is a good starting point

  6. On the 'Settings' step, click on the 'Network security group' option. Add a new 'Inbound rule' with the options set as:

    • Name: node-red-editor
    • Priority: 1010
    • Protocol: TCP
    • Destination port range: 1880

  7. Click 'Ok' on the Settings page, check the Summary then click 'Ok' to deploy the new instance

After a couple of minutes your instance will be running. In the console you can find your instance's IP address

Setup Node-RED

The next task is to log into the instance then install node.js and Node-RED.

Log into your instance using the authentication details you specified in the previous stage.

Once logged in you need to install node.js and Node-RED

   curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.38.0/install.sh | bash
   source ~/.bashrc
   nvm install --lts
   nvm install 14.17.6
   sudo apt-get install -y nodejs build-essential
   sudo npm install -g --unsafe-perm node-red

At this point you can test your instance by running node-red. Note: you may get some errors regarding the Serial node - that's to be expected and can be ignored.

Once started, you can access the editor at http://<your-instance-ip>:1880/.

To get Node-RED to start automatically whenever your instance is restarted, you can use pm2:

   sudo npm install -g --unsafe-perm pm2
   pm2 start `which node-red` -- -v
   pm2 save
   pm2 startup

Note: this final command will prompt you to run a further command - make sure you do as it says.

Running on Azure Container Instance

Create Azure Container Registry

  1. Create a Container Registry and store the Node-RED image in the container registry

  2. Log in to a registry using Azure CLI

   az login
   az acr login --name myregistry
   docker login myregistry.azurecr.io

Create an Azure file share

Run the following script to create a storage account to host the file share, and the share itself. The storage account name must be globally unique, so the script adds a random value to the base string.

## Change these parameters as needed
   RESOURCE_GROUP=MyResourceGroup
   STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME=storageaccount$RANDOM
   LOCATION=eastus
   FILE_SHARE_NAME=node-red-share
   IMAGE=myregistry.azurecr.io/node-red:latest
   ACI_NAME=node-red

## Create the storage account with the parameters
   az storage account create \
      --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
      --name $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME \
      --location $LOCATION \
      --sku Standard_LRS

## Create the file share
   az storage share-rm create \
    --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
    --storage-account $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME \
    --name $FILE_SHARE_NAME \
    --quota 1024 \
    --enabled-protocols SMB \
    --output table

Get storage credentials

To mount an Azure file share as a volume in Azure Container Instances, you need three values: the storage account name, the share name, and the storage access key.

  • Storage account name - If you used the preceding script, the storage account name was stored in the $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME variable. To see the account name, type
echo $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME
  • Share name - This value is already known (defined as node-red-share in the preceding script). To see the file share name
echo $FILE_SHARE_NAME
  • Storage account key - This value can be found using the following command
STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY=$(az storage account keys list --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --account-name $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME --query "[0].value" --output tsv)

echo $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY

Deploy Node-Red on container instance and mount volume - CLI

To mount an Azure file share as a volume in a container by using the Azure CLI, specify the share and volume mount point when you create the container with az container create. If you followed the previous steps, you can mount the share you created earlier by using the following command to create a container

az container create \
        --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
        --name $ACI_NAME \
        --image $IMAGE \
        --dns-name-label unique-acidemo-label \
        --ports 1880 \
        --azure-file-volume-account-name $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME \
        --azure-file-volume-account-key $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY \
        --azure-file-volume-share-name $FILE_SHARE_NAME \
        --azure-file-volume-mount-path /aci/logs/

The --dns-name-label value must be unique within the Azure region where you create the container instance

Using Bash

You can combine the aforementioned commands and execute the bash script to create an Azure Container Instance for Node-RED. Here is the bash script for Node-RED

#!/usr/bin/env bash

RESOURCE_GROUP=MyResourceGroup
STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME=storageaccount$RANDOM
LOCATION=eastus
FILE_SHARE_NAME=node-red-share
IMAGE=testingregistrydevops.azurecr.io/node-red:latest
ACI_NAME=node-red

# Function to handle errors
handle_error() {
    echo "Error: $1" >&2
    exit 1
}

# Azure Login
az login || handle_error "Failed to login to Azure"

# ACR Login
az acr login --name testingregistrydevops.azurecr.io || handle_error "Failed to login to ACR"

# Check if Resource Group exists
if az group show --name $RESOURCE_GROUP &>/dev/null; then
    echo "Resource group '$RESOURCE_GROUP' already exists."
else
    # Creating Resource Group
    az group create --name $RESOURCE_GROUP --location $LOCATION || handle_error "Failed to create resource group"
    echo "Resource group '$RESOURCE_GROUP' created."
fi

# Check if Storage Account exists
if az storage account show --name $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP &>/dev/null; then
    echo "Storage account '$STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME' already exists."
else
    # Creating Storage Account
    az storage account create \
        --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
        --name $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME \
        --location $LOCATION \
        --sku Standard_LRS || handle_error "Failed to create storage account"
    echo "Storage account '$STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME' created."
fi

# Creating File Share
echo "Creating file share '$FILE_SHARE_NAME'..."
if az storage share-rm create \
    --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
    --storage-account $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME \
    --name $FILE_SHARE_NAME \
    --quota 1024 \
    --enabled-protocols SMB \
    --output table &>/dev/null; then
    echo "File share '$FILE_SHARE_NAME' created successfully."
else
    handle_error "Failed to create file share '$FILE_SHARE_NAME'"
fi

# Fetch Storage Account Key
STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY=$(az storage account keys list --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --account-name $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME --query "[0].value" --output tsv)
echo $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY

# Creating Azure Container Instance for Node-Red
if az container show --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP --name $ACI_NAME &>/dev/null; then
    echo "Azure Container Instance '$ACI_NAME' already exists."
else
    # Creating Azure Container Instance for Node-Red
    az container create \
        --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
        --name $ACI_NAME \
        --image $IMAGE \
        --dns-name-label unique-acidemo-label \
        --ports 1880 \
        --azure-file-volume-account-name $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME \
        --azure-file-volume-account-key $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY \
        --azure-file-volume-share-name $FILE_SHARE_NAME \
        --azure-file-volume-mount-path /aci/logs/ || handle_error "Failed to create container instance"

    echo "Azure Container Instance '$ACI_NAME' created."
fi

After executing the file, you can make the application accessible by using the public IP or Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) of the Azure Container Instance.

node-red

Additionally, you can verify whether the file share is properly mounted using Azure Container Instances (ACI)

aci