Week 9 (01/11 - 05/11)
More Azure research and architecture feedback.
Figuring out what to do with Azure
My week started with a meeting with Mark Klerkx, an expert on Azure infrastructure. The goal of the meeting was to present the project and get his opinion on what kind of services would suit my needs.
Some prior exploration was done leading up to the meeting to make sure I had enough knowledge to have a dialogue instead of simply asking him what to do. This lead me to various options to be discussed, such as the use of BLOB storage, Container Service etc.
The meeting was very enlightening, and I want to put emphasis on the enthusiasm Mark showed. It was incredibly motivating and I am very appreciative of this. As for the actual content of this meeting:
It was mentioned that Azure has special log services that can be queried, stored and manipulated. This is ideal for one of the main goals of the project: monitoring the status of jobs.
Azure File Share/BLOB Storage: the possibility of mounting these storage methods to a Docker container or VM was mentioned. I was not aware this was possible, and this makes sharing data (like media or raw analysis data) between services very simple.
The use of Azure Functions: it is possible to trigger Azure Functions based on uploading media. This means it is possible to trigger a function when Analysis data is placed in the File Share or BLOB Storage.
Azure KeyVaults: the KeyVaults service was highlighted as an easy and cloud-native way of storing certificates, keys and other sensitive data. This could possibly be used to store Secrets for communication between services.
Based on the mentioned services, we came to a few architecture proposals. I spent the rest of the week exploring these options and taking notes to eventually come to a concrete proposal.
More clarity in my architecture
After showing the various options Azure presented, the feedback received mainly aimed at my architecture. The reason so many options seemed viable was that my architecture was not yet concrete enough. To tackle this, I aim to create a Software Architecture Document exploring the project on various technical levels. In doing this, I hope to formalise my architecture and later present this to Mark to determine what Azure solutions best fit this.
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