[EPIC] Orleans 💜 Cosmos DB

[IEvangelist]

• Update Grain Persistence page. Add NuGet package link, high level details of Cosmos grain. Add Cosmos DB provider #36976
• Orleans | Add Azure Cosmos DB to Orleans quickstart #37362
• Add new page for Cosmos Persistence Grain in Persistence TOC.
• Update shopping cart sample to use Cosmos persistence grain.
• Update Contoso Monitoring sample to use Cosmos persistence grain.
  • Publish in Orleans .NET samples https://github.com/dotnet/samples/tree/main/orleans.

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Associated WorkItem - 156752

[markjbrown]

Note from meeting.

Orleans:

• Create new Grain Persistence Page.

Cosmos:

• Update Orleans Quickstart from Azure Storage
• Make this a tutorial geared towards a Cosmos user.

Everything on .NET 8 to align with IGNITE

[seesharprun]

Note from meeting.

Orleans:

• Create new Grain Persistence Page.

Cosmos:

• Update Orleans Quickstart from Azure Storage
• Make this a tutorial geared towards a Cosmos user.

Everything on .NET 8 to align with IGNITE

Additional detail for Cosmos:

• Update quickstart to offer option to use Azure Cosmos DB or Azure Storage for persistence (https://github.com/Azure-Samples/build-your-first-orleans-app-aspnetcore).
• Create a tutorial focused on the shopping cart sample.

[seesharprun]

I just recently revamped the Quickstart's sample project:

• Revamp project Azure-Samples/build-your-first-orleans-app-aspnetcore#9

The sample application is still .NET 7 since .NET 8 requires a preview version of Visual Studio.

The next iteration of the quickstart is in a draft PR. The draft PR also includes a grain persistence page for Azure Cosmos DB:

• Orleans | Add Azure Cosmos DB to Orleans quickstart #37362

I'm still not happy with the Quickstart. With unlimited time, I would:

• Add a permanent Dockerfile to the sample application
• Push the sample application to .NET 8 now
• Update the sample application to use environment variables instead of a hard-coded connection string.
• Update the Quickstart to use Azure CLI for all steps. You can deploy easily using az containerapp up and it will deploy all necessary services.
• Move to three pivots (Azure Cosmos DB for Table, Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL, Azure Storage)

[seesharprun]

@alexwolfmsft for visibility

[seesharprun]

I have a draft PR open with an update to the shopping cart example in dotnet/samples:

• Revamp Orleans shopping cart example | .NET 8 + Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL samples#6213

[seesharprun]

I expect to have both draft PRs ready next week and will tag everyone on this thread for review.

[seesharprun]

The new Quickstart is published: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/orleans/quickstarts/deploy-scale-orleans-on-azure?pivots=azure-cosmos-db-nosql

The new grain persistence article is published: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/orleans/grains/grain-persistence/azure-cosmos-db

[seesharprun]

My pull request with the updated shopping cart example is ready for review: dotnet/samples#6213

[seesharprun]

@markjbrown:

I have updated the quickstart and grain persistence articles in this PR:

• Update Azure Cosmos DB articles for Orleans #37745

Here's the changes:

• The quickstart now uses IsResourceCreationEnabled=true to automatically create the database and container
• The grain persistence article now sets autoscale at the container level

[seesharprun]

After Ignite, I would like to change the sample application (https://github.com/Azure-Samples/build-your-first-orleans-app-aspnetcore) into an AZD template.

Here's what I'm thinking:

• Name it something more universal like orleans-url-shortener.
• The template uses in-memory storage by default. It also uses ACA as the host service with mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/samples:aspnetapp as the default container image and ACR for any images built from the application.
• Clone and deploy the template with azd init --template orleans-url-shortener and azd provision. This will create the ACR and ACA resources. You could azd up here, but there's no point running the in-memory provider in Azure. You could also debug locally at this point.
• Edit the template's code to add the Azure Cosmos DB or Azure Storage grains.
• Change the DEPLOY_AZURE_COSMOS_DB_NOSQL or DEPLOY_AZURE_BLOB_STORAGE environment variables using azd env set DEPLOY_AZURE_COSMOS_DB_NOSQL true or azd env set DEPLOY_AZURE_BLOB_STORAGE true. Setting to true will ensure that these services are created and any managed identities are configured accordingly.
• Deploy the additional data service and updated code with azd up. This will create the data resources, build the container image, push to ACR, and then deploy the container image to ACA.