dynamically provision a container instance and keep it sticky to the user session azure

Question

We are trying to dynamically provision an azure container instance to a user which has a Linux version. The front end is nodepty xterm through which we pass the commands to the container. We want to dynamically provision a container instance and keep it sticky to the user session azure. There are a lot of limitations where we need some apis to read the folder structure and things like that. Earlier before Aci we had the docker container la on the vms which worked fine for us. But we couldn’t scale because we need the user session to be sticky until the user logs out. Are there any other ways we could solve this problem?

Earlier before ACI we had the docker container la on the VM which worked fine for us. But we couldn’t scale because we need the user session to be sticky until the user logs out. Each VM could hold only so many docker containers. Once we autoscaled the VMs, the new users randomly pointed to containers and it resulted in orphan containers. Are there any other ways we could solve this problem?

Answer 1

I am not going to challenge your architecture of 1 ACI per user, but I will just say, it is unusual and will have some issues in the future (I have seen it).

In any case, here is what I would do:

• When the user logs in, create the ACI programmatically, this article will help:https://zimmergren.net/programmatically-create-azure-container-instances-aci-in-a-virtual-network/
• When the user logs out, or the session expires, I would raise an event, and then have an Azure Function or Logic App shut down the ACI (good example of shutting down ACIs with Logic Apps here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G_oDLON7Us&ab_channel=MicrosoftAzure)