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Mount an Azure file share in Azure Container Instances

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By default, Azure Container Instances are stateless. If the container crashes or stops, all of its state is lost. To persist state beyond the lifetime of the container, you must mount a volume from an external store. As shown in this unit, Azure Container Instances can mount an Azure file share created with Azure Files. Azure Files offers fully managed file shares in the cloud that are accessible via the industry standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. Using an Azure file share with Azure Container Instances provides file-sharing features similar to using an Azure file share with Azure virtual machines.

Limitations

• You can only mount Azure Files shares to Linux containers.
• Azure file share volume mount requires the Linux container run as root.
• Azure File share volume mounts are limited to CIFS support.

Deploy container and mount volume

To mount an Azure file share as a volume in a container by using the Azure CLI, specify the share and volume mount point when you create the container with az container create. Following is an example of the command:

az container create \
    --resource-group $ACI_PERS_RESOURCE_GROUP \
    --name hellofiles \
    --image mcr.microsoft.com/azuredocs/aci-hellofiles \
    --dns-name-label aci-demo \
    --ports 80 \
    --azure-file-volume-account-name $ACI_PERS_STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME \
    --azure-file-volume-account-key $STORAGE_KEY \
    --azure-file-volume-share-name $ACI_PERS_SHARE_NAME \
    --azure-file-volume-mount-path /aci/logs/

The --dns-name-label value must be unique within the Azure region where you create the container instance. Update the value in the preceding command if you receive a DNS name label error message when you execute the command.

Deploy container and mount volume - YAML

You can also deploy a container group and mount a volume in a container with the Azure CLI and a YAML template. Deploying by YAML template is the preferred method when deploying container groups consisting of multiple containers.

The following YAML template defines a container group with one container created with the aci-hellofiles image. The container mounts the Azure file share acishare created previously as a volume. Following is an example YAML file.

apiVersion: '2019-12-01'
location: eastus
name: file-share-demo
properties:
  containers:
  - name: hellofiles
    properties:
      environmentVariables: []
      image: mcr.microsoft.com/azuredocs/aci-hellofiles
      ports:
      - port: 80
      resources:
        requests:
          cpu: 1.0
          memoryInGB: 1.5
      volumeMounts:
      - mountPath: /aci/logs/
        name: filesharevolume
  osType: Linux
  restartPolicy: Always
  ipAddress:
    type: Public
    ports:
      - port: 80
    dnsNameLabel: aci-demo
  volumes:
  - name: filesharevolume
    azureFile:
      sharename: acishare
      storageAccountName: <Storage account name>
      storageAccountKey: <Storage account key>
tags: {}
type: Microsoft.ContainerInstance/containerGroups

Mount multiple volumes

To mount multiple volumes in a container instance, you must deploy using an Azure Resource Manager template or a YAML file. To use a template or YAML file, provide the share details and define the volumes by populating the volumes array in the properties section of the template.

For example, if you created two Azure Files shares named share1 and share2 in storage account myStorageAccount, the volumes array in a Resource Manager template would appear similar to the following:

"volumes": [{
  "name": "myvolume1",
  "azureFile": {
    "shareName": "share1",
    "storageAccountName": "myStorageAccount",
    "storageAccountKey": "<storage-account-key>"
  }
},
{
  "name": "myvolume2",
  "azureFile": {
    "shareName": "share2",
    "storageAccountName": "myStorageAccount",
    "storageAccountKey": "<storage-account-key>"
  }
}]

Next, for each container in the container group in which you'd like to mount the volumes, populate the volumeMounts array in the properties section of the container definition. For example, this mounts the two volumes, myvolume1 and myvolume2, previously defined:

"volumeMounts": [{
  "name": "myvolume1",
  "mountPath": "/mnt/share1/"
},
{
  "name": "myvolume2",
  "mountPath": "/mnt/share2/"
}]

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