Tutorial: Deploy a Serverless Container to Azure Container Instances (ACI)

Create a directory for your project, e.g., aci-flask-app. Inside this directory, create two files:

app.py

from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)

@app.route('/')
def hello():
    return "Hello from Azure Container Instances (ACI)!"

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run(host='0.0.0.0', port=80)
                    

requirements.txt

Flask==2.2.2
                    

In the same project directory, create a file named Dockerfile:

# Use an official Python runtime as a parent image
FROM python:3.9-slim

# Set the working directory in the container
WORKDIR /app

# Copy the current directory contents into the container at /app
COPY . /app

# Install any needed packages specified in requirements.txt
RUN pip install --no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt

# Make port 80 available to the world outside this container
EXPOSE 80

# Define environment variable
ENV NAME World

# Run app.py when the container launches
CMD ["python", "app.py"]
                    

First, build the Docker image:

cd aci-flask-app
docker build -t my-aci-app:v1 .
                    

Next, log in to Azure Container Registry (ACR) or Docker Hub. For this example, we'll use Docker Hub. You'll need to create an account on Docker Hub if you don't have one.

docker login
                    

Tag your image for your Docker Hub username and push it:

docker tag my-aci-app:v1 YOUR_DOCKERHUB_USERNAME/my-aci-app:v1
docker push YOUR_DOCKERHUB_USERNAME/my-aci-app:v1
                    

Replace YOUR_DOCKERHUB_USERNAME with your actual Docker Hub username.

Create a resource group to hold your ACI instance:

az group create --name myAciResourceGroup --location eastus
                    

Deploy your container using the Azure CLI. This command creates a container group with a single container, exposes port 80, and assigns a public IP address.

az container create --resource-group myAciResourceGroup \
    --name my-aci-container \
    --image YOUR_DOCKERHUB_USERNAME/my-aci-app:v1 \
    --dns-name-label my-aci-app-dns \
    --ports 80 \
    --location eastus
                    

Replace YOUR_DOCKERHUB_USERNAME with your Docker Hub username. The --dns-name-label value must be globally unique.

Retrieve the public IP address assigned to your container instance:

az container show --resource-group myAciResourceGroup --name my-aci-container --query ipAddress.fqdn --output tsv
                    

This command will output the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of your container instance.

Open a web browser and navigate to the FQDN you obtained in the previous step. You should see the message "Hello from Azure Container Instances (ACI)!".