Create Microsoft Azure virtual machines for NGINX Open Source and F5 NGINX Plus

This topic describes how to create Microsoft Azure virtual machines (VMs) to run NGINX Open Source or NGINX Plus.

The names and settings in this document are consistent with Active-Active HA for NGINX Plus on Microsoft Azure Using the Azure Standard Load Balancer, but these VMs can be used for any purpose.

For faster NGINX Plus deployments, you can get a prebuilt VM from the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

View the Installing NGINX Plus on Microsoft Azure topic for more details.

Before you begin

To complete this guide, you will need the following prerequisites:

• An Azure account.
• An Azure subscription.
• An Azure resource group: in this topic, it is called NGINX-Plus-HA.
• An Azure virtual network.
• root access or sudo privilege on your preferred host

If you wish to use NGINX Plus, you will need an NGINX Plus subscription (Paid or trial).

Create a Microsoft Azure virtual machine

To begin, log in to the Microsoft Azure portal.

Then select Virtual machines from the landing page of the Microsoft Azure portal, or the menu in the top-left corner of the page.

On the Virtual machines page, select + Add in the upper left corner.

In the Create a virtual machine window that opens, enter the following information on the Basics tab:

1. The value ngx-plus-1 is one of the six used for VMs in Active-Active HA for NGINX Plus on Microsoft Azure Using the Azure Standard Load Balancer.
2. This option is suitable for testing. For production deployments we recommend deploying a copy of each VM in a different Availability Zone.
3. Select Select size to access the Select a VM size window, choose the B1s row, and press the Select button to return to the Basics tab.
4. Select SSH (22) and HTTP (80) from the drop-down menu. You should also select HTTPS (443) if you plan to configure NGINX and NGINX Plus for SSL/TLS.

Once you have filled out the information of the Basics tab, select the Networking tab underneath the page heading.

Select Create new below the Public IP field, then select the Standard Radio button under SKU inn the Create public IP address column that opens.

In the Name field, accept the default created by Azure, ngx-plus-1-ip, and confirm it by selecting Ok.

If you are creating VMs to use with Active-Active HA for NGINX Plus, the two VMs must have public IP addresses with SKU type Standard instead of the default Basic.

If you’re creating 6 VMs for Active-Active HA for NGINX Plus, use the following names:

• ngx-plus-1
• ngx-plus-2
• ngx-oss-app1-1
• ngx-oss-app1-2
• ngx-oss-app2-1
• ngx-oss-app2-2

For ngx-plus-2, repeat the previous steps or get a pre built VM from the Microsoft Azure Marketplace).

For the ngx-oss-*, you can create each VM manually or follow the Create an NGINX Open Source image steps to clone additional copies.

Before continuing, there are some values you may wish to change from the default under the Disks, Networking, Management, Advanced, and Tags tabs.

By default, Azure assigns Premium SSD for the OS disk on the disk tab, but you can choose a cheaper option like Standard HDD.

After you’ve completed your changes, select Review + create at the bottom of the Create a virtual machine page.

Your settings will be summarized under the Validation passed banner. Ensure they’re correct, then select Create.

Based on the setting in the Basics tab, a Generate new key pair window will appear. Select Download key and create private resource.

The VM deployment will take a few minutes, after which you will see a summary of your resources.

Connect to the virtual machine

To install and configure NGINX Open Source or NGINX Plus on a VM, you will need to connect to the VM with SSH.

Go to the Virtual machines page on the Azure dashboard and click the VM’s name in the Name column of the table.

On the page that opens (ngx-plus-1 in this example), note the VM’s public IP address (In the Public IP address field in the right column).

Run this command to confirm an SSH connection to the VM:

ssh -i <private-key-file> <username>@<public-IP-address>

• <private-key-file> contains the private key paired with the public key you entered in the SSH public key field during Create a Microsoft Azure virtual Machine
• <username> is the name you entered in the Username field during Create a Microsoft Azure virtual Machine. In this example, it is nginx_azure.
• <public-IP-address> is the address you found during the previous step.

Install NGINX Open Source or NGINX Plus

After you’ve successfully connected to your Azure VM, you can install NGINX Open Source or NGINX Plus on it.

• Installing NGINX Open Source
• Installing NGINX Plus

Install NGINX Open Source or NGINX Plus with Ansible

For Chef and Puppet, see the following articles on the NGINX blog:

• Installing NGINX and NGINX Plus with Chef
• Deploying NGINX Plus for High Availability with Chef
• Installing NGINX and NGINX Plus with Puppet

NGINX provides automatic setup files for Open Source and Plus versions on Ansible Galaxy and GitHub.

The following instructions use the apt package manager, and should be adapted to your operating system.

You should first connect to the virtual machine, then install Ansible:

apt update
apt install python-pip -y
pip install ansible

Once Ansible is installed, you can use ansible-galaxy to install the official Ansible role from NGINX:

ansible-galaxy install nginxinc.nginx

If you are using NGINX Plus, at this stage you should copy the nginx-repo.key and nginx-repo.crt files from MyF5 to ~/.ssh/ngx-certs/.

Create a file called playbook.yml with the following contents:

---
- hosts: localhost
   become: true
   roles:
      - role: nginxinc.nginx

Then use ansible-playbook to run it:

ansible-playbook playbook.yml

Create an an NGINX Open Source image

If you’ve Installed NGINX Open Source correctly on one VM, you can save it as an Azure template to make additional copies, avoiding the need to follow the full installation process.

Navigate to the Virtual machines page, then select the name of the VM to use as a source image in the list (Named ngx-oss in this example).

On the details page that opens, select the Capture icon in the top navigation bar.

If you use one of the VMs you created in Create a Microsoft Azure virtual machine as the source for the image, you will need to re‑create a VM with that name.

Then edit the following values:

• Name – Keep the current value.
• Resource group – Select the appropriate resource group from the drop‑down menu (NGINX-Plus-HA)
• Automatically delete this virtual machine after creating the image – Yes
• Zone resiliency – On
• Type the virtual machine name – Name of the source VM (ngx-oss in this guide)

After reviewing the changed values, select the Create button.

Create a virtual machine from an NGINX Open Source image

Once the Azure image has been deployed, you can use it to create VMs with NGINX Open Source pre-installed.

Navigate to the Images page of the Microsoft Azure portal.

Select the image name in the table, then select + Create VM at the top of the main screen of the next page.

The Create a VM page is identical to the one from Create a Microsoft Azure virtual machine, but will have some pre-filled fields from your image.

For example, the Image field now shows the image name instead of an operating system.

You can continue finishing the VM creation process as normal from here, re-using the image whenever necessary.