Install Azure IoT Edge using Azure ARC-enabled servers

Overview

The purpose is to leverage the capabilities of Azure ARC-enabled Servers to install arbitrary software in a remote machine. In this case the Azure IoT Edge runtime.

For simplicity, we are going to use an Azure VM that will be "de-Azurized", i.e., remove the control agents and block the control endpoints on which Azure Compute relies in order to manage it. Then we will onboard this VM as an Azure ARC-enabled server. I will devide the process on 3 distinct scripts:

• 1_create_az_arc_iaas.sh
• 2_install_arc_on_vm.sh
• 3_install_iot_edge_via_arc_for_servers.sh

The first script will create a regular Azure VM. It will reconfigure SSH port to a preconfigured variable other than 22 in order to avoid collisions with certain enterprise Azure Policies. The second script will "de-Azurized" the VM and install Azure ARC-enabled Server agents and connect the agent as an Azure ARC-enabled Server. The last script will install Azure IoT Edge purely using Azure Arc-enabled server capabilities

Requirements

• Azure Subscription

• Environment variables with sensitive data should be created. I usually configure them in the .bashrc start-up script:

  • subscription_id
  • tenant_id
  • public_key_file
  • private_key_file

• Service Principal with role Contributor in the scope of the RG used in this demo. More granular roles should be used in production environments. Store the principal information in a file named .az_arc_onboarding_principal.json with the following content in the project root:

			{
			  "appId": "YOUR_PRINCIPAL_APP_ID",
			  "password": "YOUR_PRINCIPAL_PASSWORD"
			}

Flow

sequenceDiagram
USER           ->>  AzARM API: Create Azure VM
AzARM API      ->>  Target Server: Create Azure VM
AzARM API      ->>  USER: Azure VM Created
USER           ->>  AzARM API: Get VM Public IP
AzARM API      ->>  USER: 
USER           ->>  Target Server: De-Azurized VM. Install Azure ARC and onboard
Note right of Target Server: At this point,<br/>this VM is a random<br/>Azure ARC managed server.

USER           ->>  AzARM API: ARC SSH Install IoT Edge
AzARM API      ->> Target Server: ARC SSH Install IoT Edge
Target Server  ->>   AzARM API: 
AzARM API      ->>  USER: OK
Target Server  ->>  Az IoT Hub: Connect