I have just started exploring Azure Service Fabric & I'm finding the concepts involved a little overwhelming
Consider these 2 statements -
"Service Fabric is agnostic to the underlying hosting provider. You
can run it in Azure, you can run it on AWS, you can run it on 5
laptops - it doesn't matter."
"Azure Service Fabric for Windows Server..can be used
to..provision Service Fabric clusters in their own datacenters or
other cloud providers, and run production workloads"...any Windows Server environment...there is no real lock-in to Azure as a cloud platform
As per my understanding,
1) in Azure, app can be deployed to "Azure Service Fabric" PaaS platform.
2) On a local development machine, it can be deployed to physical or virtual machine(S) that support Azure Service Fabric SDK
3) On "other cloud providers", "Azure Service Fabric for Windows Server" has to be installed(?) on VMs before app can be deployed.
So when an app runs on Azure, it is the "Azure Service Fabric" PaaS platform but if it is deployed to any other cloud provider, it is in an IaaS mode and the maintenance of the SF infrastructure & supporting functions have to be done by deployer of the app
Is my understanding correct?
Is there any documentation on running Service Fabric on non-Azure cloud like AWS?
Can someone elaborate on the purpose of "Azure Service Fabric for Windows Server" & Azure Service Fabric SDK?
When using Azure as the cloud platform to host your Service Fabric cluster then you get some benefits from being able to setup and manage (some aspects of) your cluster directly in the Azure portal, as well as connecting it to other Azure resources such as Azure Key Vault for storing your cluster certificate securely and OMS/Azure Log Analytics for analyzing your log data from the cluster. You still get a set of IaaS resources created for you though when you set up a Service Fabric cluster in Azure, a minimum of the following IaaS resources are at least created for you:
Virtual Machine Scaleset
Public IP address
Virtual Network
Load Balancer
Storage accounts
Depending on the number of nodes and nodetypes there may be multiple instances of these. Each of the nodes are in turn a VM running (by default) Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter (you can change that in your template as well).
Running Azure Service Fabric on Azure is not really a PaaS solution, you are far to much in contact with the supporting infrastucture for that to be true. It is a mix of IaaS and PaaS I would say.
On you local development machine you can run a local development cluster that emulates running a 1 or 5 nodes cluser on you local machine. It is only intended for development and there are some features of this local cluster that will behave differently (for instance, you cannot run a reverse proxy there). https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-fabric/service-fabric-get-started
If you want to run Service Fabric on any other platform than Azure, such as an on premice data center or in another cloud platform (AWS for instance), then you should look at Create and manage a cluster running on Windows Server. You will then need to create an infrastructure similar to the infrastructure created by Azure when you create an Azure Service Fabric resource directly in Azure. You will need to create a number of VMs (or physical machines) with Windows Server 2012 R2 (or later) that are connected on the same network (virtual or physical) and you will likely need some form of load balancer. When you run Azure Service Fabric in this way you are yourself responsible for maintaining your infrastructure in terms of monitoring and maintaining them (patching the OS on your VM's, monitoring the network for vulnerabilities, etc.).
There is also a preview for running Service Fabric on Linux machines but it does not support Standalone installations yet. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-fabric/service-fabric-linux-overview.
When you have your Service Fabric cluster running on either Azure, local development cluster or as a Standalone cluster, then you could in a way consider that installation as your PaaS platform for adding new microservices.
Related
I have an existing linux VM on Azure that has PHP + MySql legacy system running on it
I also have a Flask Webapp running under same Azure subscription
is it possible to the Python WebApp reach the existing MySql database running on Linux VM using the existing internal network ?
AB
It seems that you want to access MySql database on the Azure VM from Azure web app hosted in azure app service. If so, it's possible to integrate your app with an Azure Virtual Network.
You could have a quick start in that document, just note that there are two forms to the VNet Integration feature:
Reginal VNet integration. One version enables integration with VNets in the same region. Currently, this feature is still in preview but is supported for Windows app production workloads and Linux Web App for development and integration testing purposes. Read more details here.
Gateway required VNet Integration. The other version enables integration with VNets in other regions or with Classic VNets. This version requires the deployment of a Virtual Network Gateway into your VNet. It is only supported by Windows apps.
Additionally, Since VNet Integration is extended to use Azure container instance. For Linux web app, you could deploy it on Azure container instance in a VNet. See the template. This feature is currently in preview and you could know some limitations about deploying container instances into an Azure virtual network.
If your web app is hosting on other Azure services like Azure VM, you could use VNet to VNet connection or VNet peering or VPN connection to enable the communication between the two different virtual networks. Read more details here.
Hope this could help you.
I am trying to understand the advantages of using Service Fabric over a cloud service worker role.
Currently, I am using a cloud service for hosting (web role and worker role).
Will there be any advantage if I change the cloud service to an App Service Web app for hosting the web role and a Service Fabric stateless service for hosting the worker role? If so, what are the advantages?
Service Fabric itself is an application platform layer that runs on Windows or Linux, whereas Cloud Services is a system for deploying Azure-managed VMs with workloads attached. The Service Fabric application model has a number of advantages:
Fast deployment times. Creating VM instances can be time consuming. In Service Fabric, VMs are only deployed once to form a cluster that hosts the Service Fabric application platform. From that point on, application packages can be deployed to the cluster very quickly.
High-density hosting. In Cloud Services, a Worker Role VM hosts one workload. In Service Fabric, applications are separate from the VMs that run them, meaning you can deploy a large number of applications to a small number of VMs, which can lower overall cost for larger deployments.
The Service Fabric platform can run anywhere that has Windows Server or Linux machines, whether it's Azure or on-premises. The platform provides an abstraction layer over the underlying infrastructure so your application can run on different environments.
Distributed application management. Service Fabric is a platform that not only hosts distributed applications, but also helps manage their lifecycle independently of the hosting VM or machine lifecycle.
For more details, refer "Learn about the differences between Cloud Services and Service Fabric before migrating applications".
This article helps you understand the options and make the right choice for your web application.
As #PRADEEP CHEEKATLA said,Service Fabric itself is an application platform layer that runs on Windows or Linux, whereas Cloud Services is a system for deploying Azure-managed VMs with workloads attached.
In Cloud Services, a Worker Role VM hosts one workload. In Service Fabric, applications are separate from the VMs that run them, meaning you can deploy a large number of applications to a small number of VMs, which can lower overall cost for larger deployments.
And the key difference between Service Fabric and Cloud Services is that in Cloud Services you connect to a VM, whereas in Service Fabric you connect to a service.
This is an important distinction for a couple reasons:
1.Services in Service Fabric are not bound to the VMs that host them; services may move around in the cluster, and in fact, are expected to move around for various reasons: Resource balancing, failover, application and infrastructure upgrades, and placement or load constraints. This means a service instance's address can change at any time.
2.A VM in Service Fabric can host multiple services, each with unique endpoints.
Here is a comparing Cloud Services with Service Fabric：
Also, you could refer to this article to converting Web and Worker Roles to Service Fabric stateless services.
I have .NET Core Azure Service Fabric application and I want to deploy it to my
Ubuntu Linux server.
There is tutorial for Windows Server Deployment
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-fabric/service-fabric-cluster-creation-for-windows-server
There is also tutorial for Azure Linux deployment
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-fabric/service-fabric-tutorial-create-vnet-and-linux-cluster
Is it possible to run ASF on-premise on Linux?
Nope, see the docs:
Standalone clusters currently aren't supported for Linux. Linux is supported on one-box for development and Azure Linux multi-machine clusters.
and
Supported operating systems for standalone clusters
You are able to create clusters on VMs or computers running these operating systems (Linux is not yet supported):
Windows Server 2012 R2
Windows Server 2016
As of Dec 2018, Service Fabric for Linux is available on-premises through BOSH. See:
https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/opensource/2018/12/04/announcing-service-fabric-provider-bosh/
https://starkandwayne.com/blog/deploying-microsoft-service-fabric-via-bosh/
https://github.com/starkandwayne/service-fabric-boshrelease
Below is copied from: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates/deploy-service-fabric-ubuntu-clusters-on-premises-using-bosh/ :
Service Fabric integration with Bosh provides the following:
Define and deploy infrastructure necessary for Service Fabric on any environment including on-premise (VMWare) and the three major public clouds (Azure, GCP, AWS)
Define and deploy Service Fabric Ubuntu clusters on any environment
Perform zero-downtime rolling upgrades of Service Fabric and the OS
Monitor health of the infrastructure and reattach any downed VMs or disks back to the cluster
Fully open source and collaboration to shape the future of this release is welcome!
We are in process of moving our on-premises services to service fabric and planning to host it on Azure Service Fabric cluster. These service will require access to resources which are on-premises (corp network) and we currently can not move them.
What are the options we have? In past, I've used Hybrid connection for Azure web app but I'm not sure how this can be done for services hosted with Azure Service Fabric.
Your cluster runs on nodes in a VM scale set. The nodes are connected using a VNet. Regular VPN rules apply.
So Point to site, site to site and express route should all work.
You'll need to use ARM to configure a cluster to run in an existing vnet.
I would like to run Virtual Machines as Worker Role inside an Azure App Service Environment. I think I've tried and read everything. Is this scenario supported at all?
The short answer is no. Azure VM's, worker roles (cloud services), and App Services are three different hosting offerings.
Virtual Machines are an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solution. Think of it as your own server in the cloud. It is the most most flexible option. However, you are responsible for managing and patching it.
Cloud Services are a Platform as as Service (PaaS). Your concerns are limited to building and deploying your application. Microsoft manages updating the underlying VM.
App Services are a higher level of PaaS. Specifically, you can think of Web Apps (formerly Web Sites) as a hosted IIS. You have the least amount of control compared to the other platform offerings, but it is the easiest way to get started.
I would suggest trying to run your application first in an App Service, then moving to a cloud service if you need more control, and finally to a VM when even more flexibility is required.
More information:
http://robertgreiner.com/2014/03/windows-azure-iaas-paas-saas-overview
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/hanuk/archive/2013/12/03/which-windows-azure-cloud-architecture-paas-or-iaas.aspx