Updated on May 6, 2020

Deploy private network example on Azure

The Hyperledger Besu Quickstart on Azure enables deploying a private IBFT 2.0 network, including:

  • Bootnode
  • RPC node
  • 2 regular nodes
  • Block explorer
  • Prometheus and Grafana with the Besu dashboard installed.

The above is deployed on a single Azure VM in a matter of minutes.

Once deployed, you can develop and test applications and connect to the VS Code plugin using the RPC endpoint: http://<VM_IP>/jsonrpc

Overview

A high level overview of the deployed network is:

Image landing

Deploying

To deploy the private network example on Azure:

  1. Create a Resource Group in the Azure Portal.

  2. Search for Besu Quickstart or enter the URL https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/consensys.hyperledger-besu-quickstart directly in your browser.

    The Hyperledger Besu Quickstart landing page is displayed.

    Image landing

  3. Click the Create button. The Basics is displayed.

    Image basics

  4. Enter:

    • Details of the Resource Group you created earlier
    • Basic user credentials to start a VM
    • Prefix for your new VM and any other resources created
    • Region to which you wish to deploy the VM.

  5. Select the size of the VM you want to use.

    Image size

  6. To start the deployment, click the Review + Create at the bottom left of the page.

    Image dep

    The deployment is started and typically takes around 3-5 minutes. The the progress of your deployment is displayed.

    When the deployment is complete, the resources created are displayed.

    Image dep_complete

  7. Click on the Go to Resouce button. Everything created in the deployment is displayed.

    Image res

  8. Click on the VM name. The VM details such as the IP and DNS name are displayed. Use the IP and DNS name displayed to connect to the VM, either in browser or via RPC calls.

    Image vm

Block Explorer

To display the block explorer, open a new tab and enter either the IP of the VM, or the DNS name.

Image be

Metrics

The deployment includes Prometheus metrics and Grafana with a custom Besu Dashboard installed. To display the dashboard:

  1. Open a new tab and enter the IP or DNS name appended with /grafana. For example: http://<DNS_NAME_OF_VM>/grafana.

  2. Click on home and select the Besu dashboard.

    Image grafana

The dashboard provides a visual way to monitor your network and nodes as the chain progresses. Alerting can also be configured.

Connecting to VM RPC Endpoint

You can connect DApps or develop directly from the IDE using the VS Code and connect to the VM RPC endpoint. The endpoint is the DNS name appended with /jsonrpc: http://<DNS_NAME_OF_VM>/jsonrpc

SSH

You can ssh into the VM to see how everything is set up and working. Use the credentials from earlier and your preferred client:

ssh username@<DNS_NAME_OF_VM>

To list all containers running, run docker ps. Find the complete setup in /home/<username>/besu-quickstart.

Image ssh