Getting started with Scai on Microsoft's Azure Marketplace

We are trying to make Scai platform easy to get started with. If at any point, you are having trouble, please feel free to reach out to us at info@scaidata.com. We are here to help you.

Microsoft's Azure Cloud is a great place to get started with Scai in the cloud. Scai on Azure allows you to try and start using Scai without worrying about installation details. There are only a few steps to be made to connect Scai to your existing Azure data sources, including Azure SQL databases and datawarehouses.

Finding Scai on Azure

Scai on Azure through the browser

You can easily find the Scai platform on Azure by using a browser and navigating here. To get started with ScaiPlatform on Azure, follow these steps:

  • select the product
  • click on Get it now
  • subscribe to the software, by agreeing to the terms and conditions
  • then, you will be redirected to the Azure portal where you will be able to further configure the virtual machine as described in section Scai on Azure through the portal

Scai on Azure through the portal

  • Launch a new instance from the Azure portal, once you find the Scai product in the Marketplace section.
  • Once subscribed, you will be redirected to the page where you can configure the Scai Instance
  • Follow the steps in the Configuring Scai Instance section.

Configuring Scai Instance

Once on the configuration page for launching a new Scai instance, you need to follow these steps:

  1. Basics
    • Give the virtual machine a name you can remember it by
    • Choose a region that is closer to your geographical location
    • Depending on how heavily you are planning to use Scai, you can choose different virtual machine types to run Scai on

      Recommendation

      For optimal performance, use at least a Standard_B1ms machine for less than 10 users or a Standard_B2ms machine for 10 users.

    • For the administrator account, choose the SSH key authentication and provide your user name and SSH public key. For more information about SSH access to your Microsoft Azure Linux Virtual Machines, please consult the Azure documentation.
  2. Disks
    • Choose the type of disk you would like to use for the operating system of the Virtual Machine. Any type of disk will work, but we recommend you to use a disk with a better performance.
    • Add a data disk to your Scai virtual machine. This data disk will contain all the metadata you create while using Scai. Think of the users, roles, dashboards or roles that you create within the Scai application. This volume will also contain all data that you store in the default SQL data source that Scai comes bundled with. In most cases, 4GiB of Standard SSD should be enough for this volume.

      Make sure that the LUN of the data disk is 0, otherwise Scai will not be able to detect and use it as the volume to store the metadata.

  3. Networking
    • here, you will usually leave all details unmodified, unless you have explicit reasons to change the default configuration, e.g. place the Scai instance in a separate network.

      By default, the Scai virtual machine comes up with preconfigured network security rules that allow access to the virtual machine on the ports 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS). You can change it additionally for more fined control.

  4. Management, Guest Config,Tags and Review + create
    • In these sections, the default values will most of the times be sufficient for your use cases.
  5. Once the deployment is started, you can wait until the virtual machine is created and then you will be able to use Scai!

Accessing the Scai interface

Once the your virtual machine instance has been deployed, launch a browser tab and enter the url http(s)://<public_ip>.

Accessing the Scai interface through a secure connection

The SSL certificate used for https connections is self signed. Therefore, you need to add an exception into your browser to bypass any warnings or use other services/certificates to secure your connection to Scai.

Credentials

You will then be prompted to enter your Scai credentials. Initially, the user name will be admin and the default password will be the subscription id. Both this subscription id and the public ip can be found in the description of your Azure Virtual Machine. We recommend you to immediately change the password for the default user by going to Settings -> Change password.

After you are logged in, follow the regular Getting Started guide.

Connecting Scai to Azure SQL

Once you have Scai up and running and an Azure SQL database in place, you can easily connect to it. Just follow these steps:

  1. go to the Azure SQL database information page and copy its JDBC connection string
  2. go to Scai and then Data Sources -> Create New
  3. select the SqlServer2012+ as the vendor and give the data source an easy to remember name
  4. replace the url with the url copied in step 1
  5. delete the user= and password= parts from the url since we enter the credentials in separate fields below
  6. enter your credentials (user name and password) for the database connection
  7. next, we need to allow access to the Azure SQL database for the Scai instance
  8. since both the Azure SQL and Scai instance were created within the same private virtual network, we can just add access to the entire private virtual network
  9. Go to the Azure SQL information page and then click on Set server firewall. Then click on Add existing virtual network and follow the steps to create a new firewall rule.
  10. finally, go back to Scai's interface. You are now able to connect to the Azure SQL database and start playing with Scai!

Managing the Scai instance

Check out the cloud setup for more information on how to manage the deployed Scai instance.