Deployment automation on Azure

Dear KNIME Community,

I was wondering whether anybody has experience with automated deployments on Azure. I am not super experienced in all options that are available in Azure, but got the gut feeling that ARM templates or Ansible could be suitable for this. I found some documentation in the KNIME docs, however the links to example ARM templates are broken.

The reason I am interested in templated deployments, is that I have to provide my own certificate (using Let’s Encrypt) and would like to automate those commands for retrieving it (since the setup I am currently creating has to be handed over and maintence and redeployment have to be as easy as possible).

In my ideal scenario I would like to have the following:

  • Deploy a new version of KNIME Server using the Azure Marketplace (this includes the billing for the KNIME Server license)
  • Run “post-installation”-scripts (installing the certificate)
  • Tune the tomcat config (to match the newly installed certificate)

The reason Hashicorp Packer would not work (as far as I understand), is that this won’t include the license for the server, since that is managed via Azure Marketplace.

Is this approach even possible and how could I create this setup?

Thanks!
Lars

Hi Lars,

You have the ability to login to KNIME Server instances once they are launched from the Azure Marketplace. So you can automate using ssh/scp for example, to load scripts onto the instance and execute them. How you login depends on if you set up the instance with a username and password or with key.

Cheers,
Jim

Hi Jim,

Thanks for the suggestion! However I was looking for more of a one-click type of deploy as is possible from Azure Marketplace, but I have to find out whether a single script also might do the job.

Thanks!
Lars