Cloudera Docs

Creating your first Azure Function App

Azure Functions is a serverless computer service that allows you to write less code, maintain less infrastructure, and save on costs. Instead of deploying and maintaining servers, the cloud infrastructure provides all the up-to-date resources needed to keep your applications running. In Azure Functions, a function app provides the execution context for your individual functions.

Follow these steps to create an Azure Function App that is able to run DataFlow Functions:

  1. Navigate to the Azure Portal in your cloud account and click the Function App service.
  2. Click Create Function App.

    You can now create your Function App:

    1. Select the Subscription and the Resource Group that you want to use.
      You can also create a new one, dedicated to this Function App.
    2. Provide a name for your Function App.
    3. Select Java for Runtime stack.
    4. Select 11.0 for Version.
    5. Select the Region where you want to deploy your Function App.
    6. Select the Operating System.
      You can keep Windows, or you can choose Linux.
    7. Select the Plan type that you want to use.
      Azure has multiple plan types which should be weighed depending on your use case. The default is Consumption, which means that no dedicated servers are provisioned and your Function App is automatically scaled completely based on consumption. There are many differences between these plans, including memory limits, timeout limits and networking support. For a full comparison of the plans, see Azure Functions hosting options.
    After completing the Basics tab, you can either click Next : Hosting > to provide additional details for your function app, or if you want to skip these configurations, click Review + create.
  3. Click Next : Hosting > to continue creating the function app in the wizard.
    You can specify an existing an existing or create a new Azure Storage account.
  4. Click Next : Networking > to move forward in the wizard.
    Depending on the Service Plan you selected, here you may be able to enable network injection.
  5. Click Next : Monitoring > to go to the next page.
    Application Insights will automatically be integrated unless disabled here.
  6. Click Review + create.

    At this point, you can safely skip the Tags tab and click Review + create as tags can be set later.

    You will get a summary of your Function App details.

  7. Click Create to create your Function App, and wait for the deployment to complete.
  1. Navigate to the storage account selected or created before, and click Access keys.
  2. Click Show keys at the top, and copy the key1 "Connection string" value.
  3. Go back to the Function App, click Configuration > New application setting to add a new setting named WEBSITE_CONTENTAZUREFILECONNECTIONSTRING, and paste the copied value as the setting value.
  4. Add another Application setting named WEBSITE_CONTENTSHARE with a value of "-fileshare".
  5. Click Continue > Save at the top.

This creates a file share to back your Function App that you can easily access from your storage account.

  1. Follow the instructions in the Managed Identity section to create a managed identity for your Function App.
  2. Navigate to the new storage account you created, and select the Containers blade.
  3. Click + Container on the top left and specify a name for a new Blob Container (e.g., "naaf").
  4. Click Create.
  5. Click the new container and select the Access Control (IAM) > Role assignments.
  6. Click Add at the top left, and specify Add role assignment.
  7. Select Storage Blob Data Reader and click Next.
  8. Change Assign access to to Managed identity.
  9. Click the Select members link.
  10. Under Managed identity, select Function App and click the name of your Function App.
  11. Click Select and Review + assign.
  12. Go back to the new Container, click Upload at the top left and upload the NaafAzureFunctions.zip file provided by Cloudera.

For Windows based Function App or non-Consumption plans, follow these steps to upload the DataFlow Functions binary to your newly created Function App:

  1. Navigate to the storage account selected or created before, and click the File shares blade under Data storage
  2. Click the file share name.

    You can see that this share has a 5 TB quota. It will be mapped to /home on the Function App filesystem.

  3. Click the data directory (or create it if it does not yet exist), and click Add directory at the top to create a directory named SitePackages.
  4. Enter the new directory and upload the NaafAzureFunctions.zip file.
  5. Create a file named packagename.txt with the contents of NaafAzureFunctions.zip and upload it as well.

    % echo "NaafAzureFunctions.zip" > packagename.txt

  1. The Function app is now created and the binary is in place, but you still need to configure the Application Settings to complete the deployment.
    See the General configuration section for configuration details.