Setting up Private Ethereum Blockchain Consortium Network on Azure

Azure provides the template that fully automates the creation of necessary Azure resources for Ethereum blockchain network like VMs, storage, network settings etc.

To create consortium network, go to the Azure portal. After login, follow below steps :

1. On Azure Dashboard, Select ‘New’ from the left side. Search for ‘Blockchain’ -> Ethereum Consortium Blockchain (as shown in image)

2.  Configure basic settings :

(i) Resource prefix - 2-6 characters long starting with lower case letter

(ii) VM username - this is name of VMs to be created (1-64 characters long)

(iii) Password - password of VMs

(iv) Resource group - Select an empty resource group or create new resource group

(v) Location - Location at which the VMs to launched (as shown in figure)

3. Enter Network size and performance (below parameters )

(i) A number of members within the network. Each member's nodes live in their own subnet.

(ii) Number of mining nodes to create for each consortium member.

(iii) Number of load balanced transaction nodes

(iv) Size of the virtual machine used for mining node

4. Set Ethereum setting

(i) Private Ethereum network ID to which to connect (max 9 digit number)

(ii) Password used to secure the default Ethereum account that will be generated

(iii) Password used to generate the private key associated with the default Ethereum account that is generated. Consider a password with sufficient randomness to ensure a strong private key

 

5. View the summary of requirements filled for building Ethereum consortium network

 

 

6. If all filled details are as per requirement, you can click on ‘Purchase’ button and all resources will be created.

 

 

This template will create VMs, network security groups, load balancer, network interfaces, storages (as shown in below figure).

Now you can deploy your application on this resource group VMs and modified the settings such as port inbound, port outbound in network security group, load balancing rules.

 

 

It is a quick way to set up an environment for a blockchain based application which is to be deployed on Azure.