Container App With Azure Storage

How to use powershell and the Azure CLI to create an Azure container app with storage.

Login

az login

Note A browser window will open allowing you to enter your credentials

Switch Subscription if you have multiple

az account list
az account set --subscription "VS Subscription"
az account show

List all the storage accounts in the subscription

az storage account list

List all resource groups

az group list

Creating a new azure files mount for an azure container app

Alot of the folloing comes from: Tutorial: Create an Azure Files storage mount in Azure Container Apps | Microsoft Learn

Set local environment variables to use for rest of process

export RESOURCE_GROUP="containerAppRG"
export ENVIRONMENT_NAME="my-app-environment"
export LOCATION="eastus2"

Tip to check the environment variable is set correctly

printenv {VariableName}

Ensure you have the latest Container Apps extension

az extension add -n containerapp --upgrade

Register the Microsoft.App namespace

az provider register --namespace Microsoft.App

Register the OperationalInsights if you haven’t used it before

az provider register --namespace Microsoft.OperationalInsights

Create the resource group

az group create \
  --name $RESOURCE_GROUP \
  --location $LOCATION \
  --query "properties.provisioningState"

Create the Container App Environment

az containerapp env create \
  --name $ENVIRONMENT_NAME \
  --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
  --location "$LOCATION" \
  --query "properties.provisioningState"

In Progress:

It displays this, but if it doesn’t wait until the resource is created to go back to the prompt, you can check with

az containerapp env show -n container-app-environment -g containerAppRG

Check with the command:

Setting up the storage account

Set another environment variable

export STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME="myacastorageaccount$RANDOM"

Create the storage account

az storage account create \
  --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
  --name $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME \
  --location "$LOCATION" \
  --kind StorageV2 \
  --sku Standard_LRS \
  --enable-large-file-share \
  --query provisioningState

Define a file share name

export STORAGE_SHARE_NAME="myfileshare"
# export STORAGE_SHARE_NAME="shareone"

Create the storage file share

az storage share-rm create \
  --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
  --storage-account $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME \
  --name $STORAGE_SHARE_NAME \
  --quota 1024 \
  --enabled-protocols SMB \
  --output table

Get the storage account key

export STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY=`az storage account keys list -n $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME --query "[0].value" -o tsv`
# printenv STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY

Set the storage mount name

Note This value is the name used to define the storage mount link from your Container Apps environment to your Azure Storage account.

export STORAGE_MOUNT_NAME="mystoragemount"

Create the storage mount

Create the storage link in the environment

az containerapp env storage set \
  --access-mode ReadWrite \
  --azure-file-account-name $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME \
  --azure-file-account-key $STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY \
  --azure-file-share-name $STORAGE_SHARE_NAME \
  --storage-name $STORAGE_MOUNT_NAME \
  --name $ENVIRONMENT_NAME \
  --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
  --output table
# currently do not know where this would be visible in the portal

This command creates a link between container app environment and the file share created with the az storage share-rm command.

Now that the storage account and environment are linked, you can create a container app that uses the storage mount.

Define the container app name

export CONTAINER_APP_NAME="my-container-app"

Create the container app

az containerapp create \
  --name $CONTAINER_APP_NAME \
  --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
  --environment $ENVIRONMENT_NAME \
  --image nginx \
  --min-replicas 1 \
  --max-replicas 1 \
  --target-port 80 \
  --ingress external \
  --query properties.configuration.ingress.fqdn

This command displays the URL of your new container app.

Once the page loads, you’ll see the “Welcome to nginx!” message. Keep this browser tab open. You’ll return to the website during the storage mount verification steps.

Now that you’ve confirmed the container app is configured, you can update the app to with a storage mount definition.

Export the container app’s configuration

az containerapp show \
  --name $CONTAINER_APP_NAME \
  --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
  --output yaml > app.yaml

Note While this application doesn’t have secrets, many apps do feature secrets. By default, when you export an app’s configuration, the values for secrets aren’t included in the generated YAML.

If you don’t need to change secret values, then you can remove the secrets section and your secrets remain unaltered. Alternatively, if you need to change a secret’s value, make sure to provide both the name and value for all secrets in the file before attempting to update the app. Omitting a secret from the secrets section deletes the secret.

Open the yaml in a code editor

nano app.yaml
# or
code app.yaml

Add a reference to the storage volumes to the template definition.

template:
  volumes:
  - name: my-azure-file-volume
    storageName: mystoragemount
    storageType: AzureFile

Add a volumeMounts section to the nginx container in the containers section

containers:
  - image: nginx
    name: my-container-app
    volumeMounts:
    - volumeName: my-azure-file-volume
      mountPath: /var/log/nginx

Update the container app with the new storage mount configuration.

az containerapp update \
  --name $CONTAINER_APP_NAME \
  --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
  --yaml app.yaml \
  --output table

Verify the storage mount

Open an interactive shell inside the container app to execute commands inside the running container

# export CONTAINER_APP_NAME="my-container-app"
# export RESOURCE_GROUP="containerAppRG" 
az containerapp exec \
  --name $CONTAINER_APP_NAME \
  --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP

This command may take a moment to open the remote shell. Once the shell is ready, you can interact with the storage mount via file system commands.

Files

Files located here are stored in the share, not in the container

cd /var/log/nginx

Cleanup the resource group if this was temporary or testing

export RESOURCE_GROUP="containerAppRG" 
az group delete \
  --name $RESOURCE_GROUP

Final Summary

While this was fun, I learned quite literally the day after about Azure Bicep which seems to simplify the configuration declaration. I am looking forward to doing this same process but with Bicep in the near future.