Hello, Service Fabric!

  • 8/31/2016
Contents

Getting started

To get started with Service Fabric development, you need two things:

  • A development environment

  • A Service Fabric cluster

In this section, first you’ll set up a local development, which includes a local multinode cluster that allows you to deploy and test your applications. Then, you’ll provision a managed Service Fabric cluster on Microsoft Azure. This book primarily focuses on developments using C# in Visual Studio 2015. However, we’ll briefly cover developments using other languages such as Node.js.

Setting up a development environment

To set up a development environment, you’ll need Visual Studio 2015 and Service Fabric SDK. You can install Service Fabric SDK via Microsoft Web Platform Installer (Web PI, https://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx). Just follow the installation wizard and accept all default options to complete the installation. This book uses the Preview 2.0.135 version.

In addition, install the following tools:

  • Latest version of Microsoft Azure SDK for .NET (using Web PI, this book uses 2.8.1)

  • Latest version of Microsoft Azure PowerShell (using Web PI, this book uses 1.0)

Service Fabric SDK provides a local multinode Service Fabric cluster to which you can deploy and test your applications.

Provisioning a Service Fabric cluster on Azure

Although you can use the local cluster provided by Service Fabric SDK for local development and tests, you’ll want a hosted cluster on Azure for your production deployments.

note.jpg NOTE: Microsoft Azure subscription

To use Microsoft Azure, you need a Microsoft Azure subscription. If you don’t have one, you can apply for a free one-month trial at https://azure.microsoft.com/pricing/free-trial/.

You can follow these steps to create a new Service Fabric cluster.

Microsoft Azure management portal terms

As you click links in the portal, the display areas that expand to the right are called blades. You also may see the following terms used in talks and articles:

  • Hub A hub gathers and displays information from multiple data sources. For instance, all notifications from different services are displayed in a centralized notification hub, which can be brought up by the Bell icon on the top command bar.

  • Dashboard The home page after you log in is called a dashboard, where you can pin various types of resources for quick access.

  • Tile Each item you pin on the dashboard is represented by a tile.

  • Journey As you go through a workflow, your navigation steps are recorded as a journey. You can see the history of your journey at the top of the page, and you can click any of the steps to track back or to jump ahead. Journeys are recorded automatically, and you can access previous journeys by clicking the down arrow icon beside the Microsoft Azure label, as shown in the following figure.

013fig01.jpg

Click to view larger image

To provision a Service Fabric cluster, complete the following steps:

  1. Sign in to Microsoft Azure management portal (https://portal.azure.com).

  2. Click the New icon in the upper-left corner of the home page. Then, click Marketplace, as shown in Figure 1-3.

    FIGURE 1-3

    FIGURE 1-3 Create a new resource on Microsoft Azure

  3. Under the Everything category, type service fabric in the Search box and press Enter. You’ll see a Service Fabric Cluster entry, as shown in Figure 1-4. Click the entry to create a new Service Fabric cluster.

    FIGURE 1-4

    FIGURE 1-4 Service Fabric in Marketplace

  4. On the Service Fabric Cluster blade, click the Create button to continue, as shown in Figure 1-5.

    FIGURE 1-5

    FIGURE 1-5 Service Fabric template blade

  5. On the Basics blade, enter a Cluster Name. Enter the user credentials for VM. Select the Azure Subscription you want to use, and type a name for the new Resource Group. Then, pick an Azure Location where you want the cluster to be hosted, and click OK to continue, as shown in Figure 1-6.

    FIGURE 1-6

    FIGURE 1-6 Service Fabric Cluster creation blade

    note.jpg NOTE: Azure resource groups

    A resource group is a collection of resources on Azure. On Azure, every resource, such as a virtual machine or a virtual network, belongs to a resource group. A resource group defines a management boundary and a security boundary. You can provision and deprovision all resources in a resource group as a logical unit. And you can apply group-level Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) policies, which are inherited by all members in the group.

  6. Click Node Type and create a new node type configuration. (You’ll find more information about types of nodes later in this book.) In the Node Type Configuration blade, enter a name for the node type and pick a virtual machine size. Type 80 for the Custom Endpoints value, and then click OK, as shown in Figure 1-7.

    FIGURE 1-7

    FIGURE 1-7 Service Fabric Cluster settings blade

  7. Change the Security mode to Unsecure, and follow the creation wizard to complete provisioning the cluster.

  8. The provisioning process takes a few minutes. Once that is done, you’ll have a new tile on your dashboard to access the cluster. Figure 1-8 shows the cluster blade, on which you can find the cluster public address (in the format of <cluster name>.<region>.cloudapp.azure.com) and the port number (the default is 19000). You’ll need this information to connect to the cluster later.

    FIGURE 1-8

    FIGURE 1-8 Service Fabric cluster blade

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