Deploy lakeFS on Azure

Expected deployment time: 25 min

Prerequisites

Users that require S3 access using virtual host addressing should configure an S3 Gateway domain.

Creating the Database on Azure Database

lakeFS requires a PostgreSQL database to synchronize actions in your repositories. We will show you how to create a database on Azure Database, but you can use any PostgreSQL database as long as it’s accessible by your lakeFS installation.

If you already have a database, take note of the connection string and skip to the next step

1. Follow the official Azure documentation on how to create a PostgreSQL instance and connect to it. Make sure that you’re using PostgreSQL version >= 11.
2. Once your Azure Database for PostgreSQL server is set up and the server is in the Available state, take note of the endpoint and username.
3. Make sure your Access control roles allow you to connect to the database instance.

Installation Options

On Azure VM

1. Save the following configuration file as config.yaml:

   ---
   database:
     type: "postgres"
     postgres:
       connection_string: "[DATABASE_CONNECTION_STRING]"
   auth:
     encrypt:
       # replace this with a randomly-generated string:
       secret_key: "[ENCRYPTION_SECRET_KEY]"
   blockstore:
     type: azure
     azure:
       auth_method: msi # msi for active directory, access-key for access key 
         # In case you chose to authenticate via access key, unmark the following rows and insert the values from the previous step 
         # storage_account: [your storage account]
         # storage_access_key: [your access key]
   

2. Download the binary to the Azure Virtual Machine.
3. Run the lakefs binary on the machine:

   lakefs --config config.yaml run
   

   Note: It is preferable to run the binary as a service using systemd or your operating system’s facilities.

4. To support Azure AD authentication go to Identity tab and switch Status toggle to on, then add the `Storage Blob Data Contributor’ role on the container you created.

On Azure Container instances

To support container-based environments like Azure Container Instances, you can configure lakeFS using environment variables. Here is a docker run command to demonstrate starting lakeFS using Docker:

docker run \
  --name lakefs \
  -p 8000:8000 \
  -e LAKEFS_DATABASE_TYPE="postgres" \
  -e LAKEFS_DATABASE_POSTGRES_CONNECTION_STRING="[DATABASE_CONNECTION_STRING]" \
  -e LAKEFS_AUTH_ENCRYPT_SECRET_KEY="[ENCRYPTION_SECRET_KEY]" \
  -e LAKEFS_BLOCKSTORE_TYPE="azure" \
  -e LAKEFS_BLOCKSTORE_AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT="[YOUR_STORAGE_ACCOUNT]" \
  -e LAKEFS_BLOCKSTORE_AZURE_STORAGE_ACCESS_KEY="[YOUR_ACCESS_KEY]" \
  treeverse/lakefs:latest run

See the reference for a complete list of environment variables.

On AKS

See Kubernetes Deployment.

Load balancing

Depending on how you chose to install lakeFS, you should have a load balancer direct requests to the lakeFS server.
By default, lakeFS operates on port 8000, and exposes a /_health endpoint which you can use for health checks.

Next Steps

Your next step is to prepare your storage. If you already have a storage bucket/container, you are ready to create your first lakeFS repository.