Overview

This guide will cover how to deploy and configure your environment using the Azure Marketplace App: Discovery Hub with Azure Data Lake

The deployment of the Azure resources will vary depending on Azure resource availability. Deploying Azure Data Lake generally takes ~15 minutes. Configuring your Discovery Hub environment generally takes ~20 minutes.

Complete the following steps to configure TimeXtender with Azure Data Lake:

1. Deploy TimeXtender with Azure Data Lake
2. Configure Accounts and Permissions
3. Find the server names
4. Register Application
5. Connect to the virtual machine
6. Configure the TimeXtender Environment
7. Configure the ODX Server

1. Deploying TimeXtender with Azure Data Lake

1. Go to https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/
2. If you are not signed in to your account, sign in now
3. In the Azure Marketplace, perform a search for TimeXtender
4. Select the deployment option from the search results.
5. Scroll down and select Get it Now and then select Continue. You will be redirected to a page that contains a wizard for creating your resources.
6. In Step 1 of the wizard, configure basic settings, and then click OK.

Setting	Description	Default Value	Requirements
Virtual Machine Name	The name of the virtual machine	Discoveryhub-vm	Must be between 3 and 79 characters long and contain letters, numbers and hyphens only.
Subscription	The subscription to place the resources in
Resource Group	The resources group that will contain all deployment items		Must be an empty resource group
Location	Location of the resource group

 

7. In Step 2 of the wizard, configure the Data Lake resources and settings, and then click OK.

Setting	Description	Default Value	Requirements
Data Lake Location	Location of the data lake store
Enable Encryption	Select whether to enable or disable encryption	No

 

8. In Step 3 of the wizard, configure the SQL Server resources and settings.

Setting	Description	Default Value	Requirements
Admin Username	Administrator for Azure SQL logical server		Alphanumeric characters between 2-30 characters long. Cannot contain any invalid usernames (i.e. admin, root, etc.)
Admin Password	Administrator password for Azure SQL logical server		Must contain at least 12 characters, with at least 1 letter and 1 number.
Confirm Password			Must contain at least 12 characters, with at least 1 letter and 1 number.
Enable Advanced Threat Protection	A unified security package for discovering and classifying sensitive data, surfacing and mitigating potential database vulnerabilities, and detecting anomalous activities that could indicate a threat to your database.	No
Allow Azure services to access server	Enable this to allow applications from Azure to connect to this server. Examples of when you would want to enable this: using the Query editor in the portal or connecting your Azure VM to your Azure SQL database.	Yes

 

9. In Step 4 of the wizard, configure the virtual machine’s resources and settings, and then click OK.

Setting	Description	Default Value	Requirements
Virtual machine password	Administrator username for the virtual machine		Cannot be the name “Administrator”
Administrator’s password	Password for the virtual machine administrator		The password must contain at least 12 characters, with at least 1 letter and 1 number
Confirm Password			Must contain at least 12 characters, with at least 1 letter and 1 number
Virtual Machine Size	Size of the virtual machine	Standard_DS2_V2
Diagnostic storage account	Select an existing storage account or create a new one.	<virtual machine name>-randomly generated number	Must be unique
Public IP Address for the VM	Select an existing IP address or create a new one	<virtual machine name>-ip
DNS Prefix for the public IP Address	DNS prefix for the public IP address	<virtual machine name>-randomly generated number	Must be unique
Virtual Network	Select an existing virtual network or create a new one	VirtualNetwork
Virtual Network Address Space	Address space for the virtual network	10.0.0.0/16	Minimum /29 prefix
Subnet name	Name of the subnet that will contain the application server	Subnet
Subnet Address Prefix	Address range for the managed instance subnet	10.0.0.0/24	Minimum /29 prefix

10. In Step 5 of the Wizard, confirm the summary settings by clicking OK.

11. In Step 6 of the wizard, review the terms of the agreements and click Create to initialize the deployment to the resource group you chose.

*Please note that deployment will vary depending on Azure resource availability. Select the Notifications icon at the top to view the status of your deployment

2. Configure Accounts and Permissions

Ensure the users, user groups, and service accounts have the necessary access and rights to the new server. Refer to Configure User Accounts & Permissions to view the requirements.

3. Find the Server Names

1. Once your items have been deployed to your resource group, navigate to the resource group in Azure that contains all of the deployment items. This was assigned when configuring basic settings.

2. While viewing the Resource Group that contains all of your deployment items, find the SQL Managed Instance and click on it.

3. While viewing your managed instance, there will be a field called Host that contains your server name. Save this name somewhere safe because it will be needed for your configuring Discovery Hub^®

4. Register Application

1. In order to access the data lake resources from Discovery Hub, you will need to register an application. Click on Azure Active Directory in the left column.

2. Click on App Registrations in the menu bar on the left.

3. Click New Application Registration

4. Choose a new for your application, and select Web app/ API as its Type. The value of Sign-on URL is the URL at which your application is hosted. Click OK. 

5. Go to Settings > Required Permissions > Add > Select an API

6. Find Azure Data Lake and select it. Next, under Select Permission check the box that says Have full access to the Azure Data Lake Service.

7. Click Done to save your changes and go back Settings > Keys to create a new customer key. This key is encrypted after save so the application key needs to be documented somewhere safe. The key value will appear after you click

8. Go back to the resource group and select the Data Lake Analytics resource. In the menu bar on the left select Access Control (IAM) and add a role assignment. Make the app you just created an owner of the resource. Repeat this step for Data Lake Storage Gen 1 in the resource group as well.

5. Connect to the Virtual Machine

1. In order to activate and configure Discovery Hub, connect to the application server deployed on Azure. Navigate to the resource group in Azure that contains all of the deployment items. 

2. Locate the Virtual Machine in the resource group and click on it.

3. While viewing the page for the virtual machine, click Connect and download the RDP

4. Open the RDP file once it has downloaded and click Connect

5. Enter in the credentials to connect to the virtual machine that you created earlier and click Ok to connect.

 

6. Configure the TimeXtender Environment

Once you are connected to the Virtual Machine, activate your Discovery Hub instance following the instructions in this article: First Time Set-Up of Discovery Hub.

 

7. Configuring the ODX Server

Please see the article, Configure and Manage the ODX Server, for configuring the ODX Server using Azure Data Lake for data storage.

8. Add Azure Data Lake Storage to TimeXtender Project

Please see the article, Add Azure Data Lake Storage to an existing TimeXtender Deployment