Exercise - Monitor and visualize your batch job in Batch Explorer

Completed

The Batch Explorer lets you view the status of jobs in the Azure Batch service.

As the solution architect, you'll need a way of visualizing the progress of large numbers of nodes and tasks being used to process water purification images in parallel.

Here, you'll execute a job in Azure Batch and then use the Batch Explorer to view its progress.

Important

The exercises in this module are optional. To complete the exercises, you'll need your own Azure subscription.

Use the Batch Explorer to analyze a job

Using Azure Batch Explorer, you can see the Batch accounts you have in your account in the left-hand sidebar, and the status of pools, nodes, jobs, and tasks in the right.

For scenarios in which you might have hundreds or thousands of tasks running in various states of progress on hundreds or thousands of nodes, it's crucial to visualize this information quickly and be able to drill down into the detail of any problems or areas of particular interest.

  1. Sign into the Azure portal.

  2. Open the Cloud Shell by selecting the Cloud Shell icon (>_) in the top menu.

  3. Run the following command in the Cloud Shell to create a new Azure Batch job, using the Batch account and pool you created in the previous exercise:

    az batch job create \
     --id explorerjob \
     --pool-id mypool
    
  4. In the Azure portal, open your Batch account resource. You can find it in your resource group's Overview section.

  5. Go to the Jobs section under Features.

  6. Select the active job.

    A panel opens up showing the job status. You haven't created any tasks and nothing is running, so this panel is empty.

  7. Run the following command in the Cloud Shell to create new Azure Batch tasks, using the Batch account and pool you created in the previous exercise:

    for i in {1..100}
    do
       az batch task create \
        --task-id mytask$i \
        --job-id explorerjob \
        --command-line "/bin/bash -c 'printenv; sleep 5s'"
    done
    

    This job consists of more tasks, each of which outputs all environment variables, then waits five seconds. Batch Explorer is powerful for monitoring more numerous and longer-running tasks.

  8. Go back to Batch Explorer. Notice, in the top-right corner, tasks being queued, an indication of progress, and the number of tasks that have succeeded or failed.

  9. Select the Refresh button to the right of the Filter by task ID box. As tasks complete, the task details, including the exit code, appear here.