Lessons learn while trying to deploy a Docker container in Azure

(Ce billet en aussi disponible en français.)

Since I saw Donovan Brown do his demo during the Connect(); // 2016 Keynote, I really want to have a taste of that left click to turn a project to Docker containers. So last Sunday I wake up early and armed with a big bowl of cafe latte start prepping my VM to try it. But as you could imagine, it didn't work on the first attempt, and that what I want to share to you.

Let's get started

I build a new VirtualBox virtual machine (VM) using an ISO of Windows 10, then install all the updates to get the anniversary edition. I afterward went to visualstudio.com to get the Visual Studio 2017 RC and install it with a few components: web, azure, etc. And next when looking for Docker for windows. Same here super easy just need to download and install the MSO from docker.com and voila... or not. Like specified in the Docker documentation the installer noticed that Hyper-V was not present in my environment and suggested installing it and reboot the machine. Until then, everything was going fine, but when Docker try to start, after the reboot, I got an error message:

Error creating machine: Error in driver during machine creation: This computer doesn't have VT-X/AMD-v enabled. Enabling it in the BIOS is mandatory

However, the setting was set, as you can see in the screenshot.



After a short investigation, I found that VirtualBox was not supporting nested virtualization, yet. Well, let's try another virtualization platform then.

First Success

I created a new VM under VMware Player this time and repeated all the steps as before. After the reboot, the little white whale in the system didn't prompt any error... Was it working? Let's try to create a Nginx Hello-world container to check. And the answer was YES!

Docker and Azure

Now let's get serious. It's time to do the left click on the project and add Docker Project Support. Then press F5 to try it locally.

ERROR: for mystuff Cannot create container for service mystuff: C: drive is not shared. Please share it in Docker for Windows Settings Encountered errors while bringing up the project..

I got too excited, and I had skipped some reading... It's written black on white in the documentation that you need to share some drive to make it work.



After that it when smoothly and in few minutes, I got my website to run in a Docker container accessible via localhost:32768. Great! Now to get it available on Azure, I need to create a registry where all the images will be saved. To do that simply left click again on the project, and select Publish. The guided dialog will popup and help you to create and deploy your things. An interesting point is before clicking the "Create" button you will have the option to export your template as a json file, very useful. But for now click Create, then Publish.



After a moment you should have a new browser window that will popup with your App now deployed in Azure.



Wow! That was really a great experience. It's definitely a very simple process to get started. I really appreciate the Docker for Windows and Kitematic user interface. Of course, all the command-line are still available, but now I also have another option for the day where I feel more for clicking instead of typing.



Let's build it and ship it, from any platform to the cloud!

Reading Notes #257

Suggestion of the week

• Microsoft Connect(); 2016 Recap (Joseph Hill) - Three full day of great content. However, if you are like me, you didn't that much free time. Fortunately, all the presentations are available in video on demand. You need a summary because even if the keynote was really good... it is still 2h30, this post is the place to start.

Cloud

• .NET Web Development and Tools Blog (Jeffrey T. Fritz) - Really cool tutorial with Visual studio, Docker, and Azure that repeat the Connect keynote demo.
  
• Five Days of Azure Functions (James Chambers) - Nice post to know more about these Azure functions that everyone is talking about.
  
• Azure App Services Continuous Delivery (Gopinath C) - This post explains how easy it is to setup a continuous integration with Azure.

Programming

• Visual Studio 2017 Release Candidate (John Montgomery) - More details about all the new stuff announced this week related to VS.
  
• The expanding Visual Studio family of products - Another post that lists all the new Visual Studio's news for the week.
  
• Using MongoDB with Web API and ASP.NET Core (Mahesh Sabnis) - Dotnet core is now much more stable and so much more performant. It worth to try it.
  
• Visual Studio Code just keeps getting better - with extensions (Scott Hanselman) - Visual Studio Code is awesome; get a list of some cool extensions in this post.

Miscellaneous

• 8 million GitHub profiles were leaked from GeekedIn's MongoDB - here's how to see yours (Troy Hunt) - Interesting post about a leak of information related to Github account.
  
• Reconnect Outlook 2016 or Outlook 2013 to Outlook.com to fix issues after Outlook.com upgrade - Outllook.com is doing a facelift. That an important upgrade could impact your access to it. If you are syncing it from Outlook on your desktop. This post explains what to do, when to it, and how to proceed.
  
• Docs.microsoft.com - I didn't have the chance to look yet, but now that have done it... Wow great job, and well organized.

Reading Notes #163

Suggestion of the week

• Save the date! Connect(“November 12 & 13”); is almost here - If you missed this incredible event, don't cry because all the presentations were recorded. We can watch them on demand on Channel 9.

Cloud

• Azure API Management Part One: An Introduction - Really nice post to get started with the brand-new API manager of Windows Azure.

• Building a Text Adventure with Azure and Orleans (Chris Risner) - While the game is not a triple A, I find the idea quite interesting.

• Opening up Visual Studio and .NET to Every Developer, Any Application: .NET Server Core open source and cross platform, Visual Studio Community 2013 and preview of Visual Studio 2015 and .NET 2015 (S.Somasegar) - This article explains all the new things that came out this week.

• Success by a thousand cuts: Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 and SQL Azure - Ha Ha, I will quote the author: “Oh man, there is so much stuff I don’t know”.

Programming

• .NET Core is Open Source - Get a better understanding of what is .net Core and the meaning / purpose of the open source announce.

• Visual Studio Community 2013 - Now that all developers can have their Visual Studio, learn what's in this community version.

• The Roadmap for WPF - This post gives all the details about what is coming next for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

• Announcing Open Source of .NET Core Framework, .NET Core Distribution for Linux/OSX, and Free Visual Studio Community Edition - Another good summary of all the great things that was released this week in the Microsoft world.

• Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 (2013.4) RTM - Learn all about the new features in this update... Codelens, webjobs, Intelisense and so much more!
  
• Visual Studio Community 2013 - Now that all developers can have their Visual Studio learn what 's in the free version called community.

Miscellaneous

• Agile Lifecycles for Geographically Distributed Teams, Part 1 - Interesting. Agile is more than scrum...

• Why Citi Got Rid of Assigned Desks - Nice post that explains how a re-organized floor can help the productivity and the team spirit.

• Visual Studio 2015 Preview, Visual Studio Community 2013, Visual Studio 2013 Update 4, and More - Learn more about all the amazing releases that happened this week during the Connect event.

• Announcing .NET 2015 - .NET as Open Source, .NET on Mac and Linux, and Visual Studio Community (Scott Hanselman) - This post lists some post that cover all the new stuff that just came up this week. Happy reading.

~Frank