Installing Docker Engine on Azure

Guidance on installing a standalone Docker Engine for Instance segmentation in the Azure Cloud environment.

arivis Pro instance segmentation is typically performed on a local workstation using Docker Desktop. This process is discussed in the KB article here:

Installing Docker for AI Instance Segmentation

Docker Desktop is not licensed or intended for multi-session use. On a server environment, the Docker Engine must be used.

The Docker Engine can be installed as a standalone instance, to be shared remotely as a service.

From arivis Cloud, the segmentation container is Linux based, so for both reduced costs and ease of implementation, we would recommend a Linux based distribution to host the Docker Engine.

Here is an overview of the required steps when creating the virtual machine on Azure.

1. To only select a GPU supported type image, add GPU to the Type filter criteria.
   
2. Then select the preferred size.
   For this example, we will use Ubuntu Server LTS Image and a smaller GPU enabled size.
   

The image is transferred to the Docker container prior to processing.

1. Select a disk.The disk must be large enough to hold all required models, and all concurrently processed images. The IOPS of the storage should at least match the network performance of the VM:
   
2. You can now start the VM.

Install | Docker Docs

Set up Docker's apt repository:

# Add Docker's official GPG key:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc

# Add the repository to Apt sources:
echo \
"deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
$(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" | \
sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update

 

Install the Docker packages:

sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

Configure remote access for Docker daemon | Docker Docs

Note that opening TCP to the Docker Engine is a security risk.

Connection to the containers can provide root access. Ensure that necessary firewall restrictions are in place to allow only expected clients. Within a Cloud environment external access is typically blocked by default but access from other machines within the virtual network need to be considered.

Edit the systemctl service override:

sudo systemctl edit docker.service

The Docker instructions specify using 127.0.0.1, which will only bind to the localhost interface. To permit external connections, 0.0.0.0 will listen on all interfaces, you can modify this to a specific interface IP as required.

Add these lines between the top comments:

[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=/usr/bin/dockerd -H fd:// -H tcp://0.0.0.0:2375

Save the file (CTRL+X) and reload the systemctl configuration.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Restart Docker:

sudo systemctl restart docker.service

Within Azure the VM Network settings must receive a new port rule to allow 2375 from any specific clients that need to connect. Also a port range for the containers is required (if 10 containers may run in parallel, use 5000-5009):

Installing the NVIDIA Container Toolkit — NVIDIA Container Toolkit 1.17.0 documentation

Configure the production repository:

curl -fsSL https://nvidia.github.io/libnvidia-container/gpgkey | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/nvidia-container-toolkit-keyring.gpg \
&& curl -s -L https://nvidia.github.io/libnvidia-container/stable/deb/nvidia-container-toolkit.list | \
sed 's#deb https://#deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/nvidia-container-toolkit-keyring.gpg] https://#g' | \
sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nvidia-container-toolkit.list

Update the packages list from the repository:

sudo apt-get update

Install the NVIDIA Container Toolkit packages:

sudo apt-get install -y nvidia-container-toolkit

1. Create an access token in arivis Cloud.
2. Copy the access token and paste it into the Access token field.
3. Inside the Remote URL field, select your server IP.
4. Click Apply to end the configuration.

Last updated: 2024.11.27

Code snippets were used from the links provided at the time of writing. Check the contained links for updates to any presented commands.