Introduction
This Quick Start guide is designed to help you deploy Lightbits on Azure. More detailed options on how to install Lightbits can be found in the Lightbits Installation and Configuration Guide.
The articles in this guide will help you deploy Lightbits block storage, including:
- Deploying Azure Virtual Machines.
- Preparing the Ansible installer VM.
- Downloading and configuring the Ansible install package.
- Preparing the Lightbits target VMs.
- Running the Install.
Prerequisites
To build Lightbits in Azure manually, you will need the following prerequisites. These will enable you to deploy and manage the cluster effectively.
Azure Tenant Access for Managed Application
Due to a new feature from Azure, tenants now block the ability to use Azure Managed Applications by default. This can be changed by following the below steps. These steps are required to deploy the Lightbits managed application.
You must have tenant level access permissions to perform this action.
- Navigate to Microsoft Entra ID within Azure.
- Navigate to External Identities and then Cross-tenant Access Settings.
- Edit Tenant restrictions (preview) and the tab External applications. Change this value to Allow access:
Azure Subscription Permissions
- Create, manage, and deploy a variety of Virtual Machine resources.
- It is recommended to have the Azure Contributor role for the Subscription or Resource Group that will be used.
Resource Group
- It is recommended to use the Resource Group logical container to group the Lightbits resources together.
- To create a Resource Group, see the Azure Resource Group Documentation.
vNet/Subnet
- You will need an Azure Virtual Network (vNet) and subnet to deploy the Lightbits resources into. This vNet and subnet must be accessible from the clients that will be connecting to the Lightbits cluster. This can be from VPC peering, or via hybrid network connectivity such as Azure Express Route.
- To create an Azure vNet and Subnet, see the Azure vNet Documentation.
Note: For the Azure vNet Quick Start guide, you do not need to create a bastion host or Virtual Machine, just the vNet and subnet. For connectivity information, see the following section here on connectivity.
Connectivity
Three types of connectivity are required to deploy Lightbits in Azure:
- External internet access via port 443.
- Inbound access for SSH to the installer VM and Lightbits target VMs.
- Connectivity between all deployed VMs (Installer and Target VMs).
For more information about connectivity during installation, see the Required Ports for Installation and Connecting to the Lightbits Software Repository articles in the Lightbits Installation and Configuration Guide
Note: To download and install the Lightbits software package, you will need a repository key. To get your key, speak to your Lightbits Sales representative.
Quota
You will need enough quota to deploy the family of VMs that will be used as targets for the Lightbits cluster. To check quotas, please refer to the Azure documentation on vCPU quotas.
Terminology
- Lsv3: Class of Azure Virtual Machines
- lbcli: Lightbits command-line interface to interact with Lightbits storage on an admin level.
- SDS: Lightbits Scale-Out Disaggregated Software-Defined Storage
Lightbits Diagram for Azure
The following diagram illustrates a cluster of three (or more) Azure Virtual Machines, with Lightbits installed.
Lightbits supports storage-optimized virtual machines:
For more information about prerequisites or the installation process and options available, refer to the relevant sections of the Lightbits Installation and Configuration Guide.