OpenEarth is dedicated to automate deployment of PG ()and its other components) deploymentof the OpenEarth stack in Azure, please assist us at https://github.com/openearth-stack.
The first component of the OpenEarth stack we focus on is PostgreSQL plus the PostGIS extension.
Managed service
Azure offers Pstgres as a managed service for app developers, a DataBase as a service (DBaaS)
Our goal is to offer a proper VM in Azure https://docsazure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/postgresql/
Of course you can also use this fully functional Linux Data Science Virtual Machine which includes Postgres.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/partners/microsoft-publishingads/marketplacelinux-data-publishingscience-vm-image-creation/
or a Postgres cluster
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/partners/bitnami/postgres-clusterdefault/
However, because the OpenEarth partners have on-premise facilities (data centres for models, a fleet, etc.) the architecture for azure deployment has to be fully hybrid.
Due to this requirement we cannot always use the DBaaS. Therefore we also offer an option using other technologies.
Hybrid
For a hybrid offering there are several options: build (automatically) from scratrch, or use a container.
There are detailed instructions on how to deploy a PG database in Azure on using only a Linux server:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/virtual-machines-linux-postgresql-install/
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After you automated the human processing time, the virtual machine spin-up time can be reduced by means of deploying containers. There are two ways to do this. First, there are classic tools to deploy full virtual machines, such as virtualbox or vmware. Vagrent Vagrant is wrapper around these tools to automate them. However, very popular nowadays is Docker to launch mini-containers fast. The differences between Docker and Vargent are explained here
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as well as Vagrent boxes (http://www.pgdevbox.com/#) are already available for download. However, these do not contain the geospatial PostGis PostGIS extension with is essential for OpenEarth applications. Hence it makes sense to script a Docker container ourselves.
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https://www.pgadmin.org/download/pip4.php
Note that some day all of the above might become unnecesary, when Azure will offer PostgreSQL via Database-as-a-Service offerings:
For
The next step in automation is to use docker-swarm to spin up a database with associated pgadmin and geoserverOf course you can also use this fully functional Linux Data Science Virtual Machine which includes Postgres.
https://azurehub.microsoftdocker.com/en-us/marketplace/partners/microsoft-ads/linux-data-science-vm/
or a Postgres cluster
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/partners/bitnami/postgres-clusterdefaultr/openearth/