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Troubleshoot common issues in Azure Container Instances

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This article shows how to troubleshoot common issues for managing or deploying containers to Azure Container Instances. See also Frequently asked questions.

If you need more support, see available Help + support options in the Azure portal.

Issues during container group deployment

Naming conventions

When you define your container specification, certain parameters require adherence to naming restrictions. The following table shows the specific requirements for container group properties. For more information, see Naming conventions in the Azure Architecture Center and Naming rules and restrictions for Azure resources.

Scope Length Casing Valid characters Suggested pattern Example
Container name1 1-63 Lowercase Alphanumeric, and hyphen anywhere except the first or last character <name>-<role>-container<number> web-batch-container1
Container ports Between 1 and 65535 Integer Integer between 1 and 65535 <port-number> 443
DNS name label 5-63 Case insensitive Alphanumeric, and hyphen anywhere except the first or last character <name> frontend-site1
Environment variable 1-63 Case insensitive Alphanumeric, and underscore (_) anywhere except the first or last character <name> MY_VARIABLE
Volume name 5-63 Lowercase Alphanumeric, and hyphens anywhere except the first or last character. Can't contain two consecutive hyphens. <name> batch-output-volume

1Restriction also for container group names when not specified independently of container instances, for example with az container create command deployments.

OS version of image not supported

If you specify an image that Azure Container Instances doesn't support, an OsVersionNotSupported error is returned. The error is similar to following, where {0} is the name of the image you attempted to deploy:

{
  "error": {
    "code": "OsVersionNotSupported",
    "message": "The OS version of image '{0}' is not supported."
  }
}

This error is most often encountered when deploying Windows images that are based on Semi-Annual Channel release 1709 or 1803, which aren't supported. For supported Windows images in Azure Container Instances, see Frequently asked questions.

Unable to pull image

If Azure Container Instances is initially unable to pull your image, it retries for time. If the image pull operation continues to fail, ACI eventually fails the deployment, and you may see a Failed to pull image error.

To resolve this issue, delete the container instance and retry your deployment. Ensure that the image exists in the registry and you typed the image name correctly.

If the image can't be pulled, events like the following are shown in the output of az container show:

"events": [
  {
    "count": 3,
    "firstTimestamp": "2017-12-21T22:56:19+00:00",
    "lastTimestamp": "2017-12-21T22:57:00+00:00",
    "message": "pulling image \"mcr.microsoft.com/azuredocs/aci-hellowrld\"",
    "name": "Pulling",
    "type": "Normal"
  },
  {
    "count": 3,
    "firstTimestamp": "2017-12-21T22:56:19+00:00",
    "lastTimestamp": "2017-12-21T22:57:00+00:00",
    "message": "Failed to pull image \"mcr.microsoft.com/azuredocs/aci-hellowrld\": rpc error: code 2 desc Error: image t/aci-hellowrld:latest not found",
    "name": "Failed",
    "type": "Warning"
  },
  {
    "count": 3,
    "firstTimestamp": "2017-12-21T22:56:20+00:00",
    "lastTimestamp": "2017-12-21T22:57:16+00:00",
    "message": "Back-off pulling image \"mcr.microsoft.com/azuredocs/aci-hellowrld\"",
    "name": "BackOff",
    "type": "Normal"
  }
],

Resource not available error

Due to varying regional resource load in Azure, you might receive the following error when attempting to deploy a container instance:

The requested resource with 'x' CPU and 'y.z' GB memory is not available in the location 'example region' at this moment. Please retry with a different resource request or in another location.

This error indicates that due to heavy load in the region in which you attempt to deploy, the resources specified for your container can't be allocated at that time. Use one or more of the following mitigation steps to help resolve your issue.

  • Verify your container deployment settings fall within the parameters defined in Region availability for Azure Container Instances
  • Specify lower CPU and memory settings for the container
  • Deploy to a different Azure region
  • Deploy at a later time

Issues during container group runtime

Container had an isolated restart without explicit user input

There are two broad categories for why a container group may restart without explicit user input. First, containers may experience restarts caused by an application process crash. The ACI service recommends applying observability solutions such as Application Insights SDK, container group metrics, and container group logs to determine why the application experienced issues. Second, customers may experience restarts initiated by the ACI infrastructure due to maintenance events. To increase the availability of your application, run multiple container groups behind an ingress component such as an Application Gateway or Traffic Manager.

Container continually exits and restarts (no long-running process)

Container groups default to a restart policy of Always, so containers in the container group always restart after they run to completion. You may need to change this to OnFailure or Never if you intend to run task-based containers. If you specify OnFailure and still see continual restarts, there might be an issue with the application or script executed in your container.

When you run container groups without long-running processes, you may see repeated exits and restarts with images such as Ubuntu or Alpine. Connecting via EXEC won't work as the container has no process keeping it alive. To resolve this problem, include a start command like the following example with your container group deployment to keep the container running.

## Deploying a Linux container
az container create -g MyResourceGroup --name myapp --image ubuntu --command-line "tail -f /dev/null"

## Deploying a Windows container
az container create -g myResourceGroup --name mywindowsapp --os-type Windows --image mcr.microsoft.com/windows/servercore:ltsc2019
 --command-line "ping -t localhost"

The Container Instances API and Azure portal include a restartCount property. To check the number of restarts for a container, you can use the az container show command in the Azure CLI. In the following example output, which we truncated for brevity, you see the restartCount property at the end of the output.

...
 "events": [
   {
     "count": 1,
     "firstTimestamp": "2017-11-13T21:20:06+00:00",
     "lastTimestamp": "2017-11-13T21:20:06+00:00",
     "message": "Pulling: pulling image \"myregistry.azurecr.io/aci-tutorial-app:v1\"",
     "type": "Normal"
   },
   {
     "count": 1,
     "firstTimestamp": "2017-11-13T21:20:14+00:00",
     "lastTimestamp": "2017-11-13T21:20:14+00:00",
     "message": "Pulled: Successfully pulled image \"myregistry.azurecr.io/aci-tutorial-app:v1\"",
     "type": "Normal"
   },
   {
     "count": 1,
     "firstTimestamp": "2017-11-13T21:20:14+00:00",
     "lastTimestamp": "2017-11-13T21:20:14+00:00",
     "message": "Created: Created container with id bf25a6ac73a925687cafcec792c9e3723b0776f683d8d1402b20cc9fb5f66a10",
     "type": "Normal"
   },
   {
     "count": 1,
     "firstTimestamp": "2017-11-13T21:20:14+00:00",
     "lastTimestamp": "2017-11-13T21:20:14+00:00",
     "message": "Started: Started container with id bf25a6ac73a925687cafcec792c9e3723b0776f683d8d1402b20cc9fb5f66a10",
     "type": "Normal"
   }
 ],
 "previousState": null,
 "restartCount": 0
...
}

Note

Most container images for Linux distributions set a shell, such as bash, as the default command. Since a shell on its own is not a long-running service, these containers immediately exit and fall into a restart loop when configured with the default Always restart policy.

Container takes a long time to start

The three primary factors that contribute to container startup time in Azure Container Instances are:

Windows images have further considerations.

Image size

If your container takes a long time to start, but eventually succeeds, start by looking at the size of your container image. Because Azure Container Instances pulls your container image on demand, the startup time you see is directly related to its size.

You can view the size of your container image by using the docker images command in the Docker CLI:

docker images

REPOSITORY                                    TAG       IMAGE ID        CREATED          SIZE
mcr.microsoft.com/azuredocs/aci-helloworld    latest    7367f3256b41    15 months ago    67.6MB

The key to keeping image sizes small is ensuring that your final image doesn't contain anything that isn't required at runtime. One way to do this is with multi-stage builds. Multi-stage builds make it easy to ensure that the final image contains only the artifacts you need for your application, and not any of the extra content that was required at build time.

Image location

Another way to reduce the impact of the image pull on your container's startup time is to host the container image in Azure Container Registry in the same region where you intend to deploy container instances. This shortens the network path that the container image needs to travel, significantly shortening the download time.

Cached images

Azure Container Instances uses a caching mechanism to help speed container startup time for images built on common Windows base images, including nanoserver:1809, servercore:ltsc2019, and servercore:1809. Commonly used Linux images such as ubuntu:1604 and alpine:3.6 are also cached. For both Windows and Linux images, avoid using the latest tag. Review Container Registry's Image tag best practices for guidance. For an up-to-date list of cached images and tags, use the List Cached Images API.

Note

Use of Windows Server 2019-based images in Azure Container Instances is in preview.

Windows containers slow network readiness

On initial creation, Windows containers may have no inbound or outbound connectivity for up to 30 seconds (or longer, in rare cases). If your container application needs an Internet connection, add delay and retry logic to allow 30 seconds to establish Internet connectivity. After initial setup, container networking should resume appropriately.

Can't connect to underlying Docker API or run privileged containers

Azure Container Instances doesn't expose direct access to the underlying infrastructure that hosts container groups. This includes access to the container runtime, orchestration technology, and running privileged container operations. To see what operations ACI supports, check the REST reference documentation. If there's something missing, submit a request on the ACI feedback forums.

Container group IP address may not be accessible due to mismatched ports

Azure Container Instances doesn't yet support port mapping like with regular docker configuration. If you find a container group's IP address isn't accessible when you believe it should be, ensure you configured your container image to listen to the same ports you expose in your container group with the ports property.

If you want to confirm that Azure Container Instances can listen on the port you configured in your container image, test a deployment of the aci-helloworld image that exposes the port. Also run the aci-helloworld app so that it listens on the port. aci-helloworld accepts an optional environment variable PORT to override the default port 80 it listens on. For example, to test port 9000, set the environment variable when you create the container group:

  1. Set up the container group to expose port 9000, and pass the port number as the value of the environment variable. The example is formatted for the Bash shell. If you prefer another shell such as PowerShell or Command Prompt, you need to adjust variable assignment accordingly.

    az container create --resource-group myResourceGroup \
--name mycontainer --image mcr.microsoft.com/azuredocs/aci-helloworld \
--ip-address Public --ports 9000 \
--environment-variables 'PORT'='9000'

  2. Find the IP address of the container group in the command output of az container create. Look for the value of ip.

  3. After the container is provisioned successfully, browse to the IP address and port of the container application in your browser, for example: 192.0.2.0:9000.

    You should see the "Welcome to Azure Container Instances!" message displayed by the web app.

  4. When you're done with the container, remove it using the az container delete command:

    az container delete --resource-group myResourceGroup --name mycontainer

Issues during confidential container group deployments

Policy errors while using custom CCE policy

Custom CCE policies must be generated the Azure CLI confcom extension. Before generating the policy, ensure that all properties specified in your ARM template are valid and match what you expect to be represented in a confidential computing policy. Some properties to validate include the container image, environment variables, volume mounts, and container commands.

Missing hash from policy

The Azure CLI confcom extension uses cached images on your local machine that may not match those that are available remotely, which can result in layer mismatch when the policy is validated. Ensure that you remove any old images and pull the latest container images to your local environment. Once you're sure that you have the latest SHA, you should regenerate the CCE policy.

Process/container terminated with exit code: 139

This exit code occurs due to limitations with the Ubuntu Version 22.04 base image. The recommendation is to use a different base image to resolve this issue.

Next steps

Learn how to retrieve container logs and events to help debug your containers.