PoC - Running Swirl in an Azure Container Instance

[erikspears]

Prerequisites

1. Azure command line interface (CLI)
2. Docker app and Docker Compose
3. Azure Cloud Administrator account privileges

Instructions

Azure Setup

Note

In this example, we name the Azure Resource Group swlat00-rg ; however, that specific name isn't meaningful to the deployment. You may use another name for your Resource Group.

• Login to Azure:
  az login
az account set --subscription "name or ID of your subscription"
• Create an Azure Resource Group:
  az group create --name <resource-group-name> --location eastus
• Create an ACR in the Resource Group:
  az acr create --resource-group <resource-group-name> --name <acr-name> --sku Basic
• Login to the ACR:
  az acr login --name <acr-name>

Docker Setup

• Pull the necessary Docker images:
  docker pull swirlai/swirl-search:latest
docker pull redis:latest

• Tag the pulled Docker images:
  docker tag swirlai/swirl-search:latest <acr-name>.azurecr.io/swirl:latest
docker tag redis:latest <acr-name>.azurecr.io/redis:latest

• Push the Docker images:
  docker push <acr-name>.azurecr.io/swirl:latest
docker push <acr-name>.azurecr.io/redis:latest

• Create an Azure Container Instance (ACI) context in Docker and use it by default:

  docker context create aci swlat00-aci-ctx
docker context use swlat00-aci-ctx

Optional Setup

Microsoft 365

• If you intend to search Microsoft sources with Swirl:

  • Follow the steps in the Swirl M365 Guide to add a new App Registration in your Azure Portal

  • Export the environment variables as below with information from that process:

    export MSAL_APP_ID=<app-id-of-registered-app>
    export MSAL_CB_PORT=8000
    export MSAL_HOST=localhost
    export MSAL_TENANT_ID=<tenant-id-of-your-tenant>
    

ChatGPT

• If you intent to use Swirl's ChatGPT integrations, including Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), export your OpenAI API key:

  export OPENAI_API_KEY=<your-openai-api-key>
  

• Check out OpenAI's YouTube video if you don't have an OpenAI API Key and want to obtain one.

Docker Container Setup

• Create the following Docker Compose file locally and name it: docker-compose.yaml

  version: '3'
   
  services:
    redis:
      image: redis
    swirl:
      image: swirlai/swirl-search:latest
      ports:
        - "8000:8000"
      command: >
        sh -c 'rm -fr ./.swirl && python swirl.py setup &&
               /usr/bin/jq ".default" ./config-swirl-demo.db.json | sed -e "s/<msal-app-id>/$MSAL_APP_ID/" \
                   -e "s/<msal-tenant-id>/$MSAL_TENANT_ID/" \
                   -e "s/<msal-port>/$MSAL_CB_PORT/" \
                   -e "s/<msal-host>/$MSAL_HOST/" > static/api/config/default &&
               python swirl.py start celery-worker celery-beats &&
               daphne -b 0.0.0.0 -p 8000 swirl_server.asgi:application'
      deploy:
        resources:
          limits:
            cpus: '1.0'
            memory: 4G
      environment: # Environment variables section
        - OPENAI_API_KEY=${OPENAI_API_KEY} 
        - ALLOWED_HOSTS="*"
        - PROTOCOL=http
        - SWIRL_EXPLAIN=True
        - SQL_ENGINE=django.db.backends.sqlite3
        - SQL_DATABASE=db.sqlite3
        - SQL_USER=user
        - SQL_PASSWORD=password
        - SQL_HOST=localhost
        - SQL_PORT=5432
  

• Bring the containers up in Azure (Note: this will take some time!):
  docker compose up

• Get the Container group name:
  az container list --resource-group <resource-group-name> --query "[].name" --output tsv

• Get the IP address of the Container instance:
  az container show --resource-group <resource-group-name> --name <output-from-previous-step> --query ipAddress.ip --output tsv

• Update the deployment with the instance IP address:

  • Edit the ALLOWED_HOST in the Docker Compose to have be the IP address from the previous step:
    ALLOWED_HOSTS=<ip-address-from-previous-step>
  • Set the MSAL_HOST value to the IP address from the previous step:
    export MSAL_HOST=<ip-address-from-previous-step>

• Redeploy the applications:
  docker compose up

Open the Swirl URLs

• You should now be able to go to the following URLs to use the installed Swirl application:
  http://<ip-address>:8000/swirl

  http://<ip-address>:8000/galaxy

Open the Containers in Azure

• Optionally, use the Azure Portal to view the Containers (this example Container is called swirl-search-org-dev-2 below):

Warning

Once the above steps are completed, your deployment is open to the public internet with no SSL and Swirl's default admin user credentials in place! Please change the Swirl admin account password immediately: https://docs.swirl.today/Admin-Guide.html#changing-a-super-user-password

[erikspears]

Kudos to @dhdnicodemus and @TempleJason for the hard work on this!