Updating an existing Container Instance

Question

I'm using a pipeline to call az container create to create an ACI from a container stored in an ACR. On initial run this works fine -- it creates the ACI, pulls the container, and starts it. But on subsequent runs it's extremely inconsistent. Sometimes it seems to work, sometimes it works but takes a long time, and sometimes it never works at all.

Is there a different process that needs to be used besides just a new create in order to update an existing ACI?

Answer 1

Hello @admanb-vw ,
In order to update an existing container instance we don't have "update" command , we will have to use rely on az container create command as mentioned in the document: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/container-instances/container-instances-update

But the main difference between the first time az container create & second time is - when we call the az container create for the second time - it will NOT go all the way to ACR to pull all the layers - it will try to use the cache of the previous deployment and modified layers will get pulled!!

Probably you might to make a note of the scenarios and let us know in which cases it takes time & in which cases it takes long time etc. (Is that happening frequently?)

One of the ways to see the live logs when the container is getting updated or created is to attach the instance using the below command and fetch the logs - it will show us the detailed logs in a step-by-step manner.
az container logs (ref: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/container-instances/container-instances-get-logs)

You can also use az container attach command to see the diagnostic logs when the container is starting up.

Regards,
Shiva.