Aerospike Community Edition on Ubuntu 24.04 on Azure User Guide

Overview

Aerospike Community Edition is a high-performance, distributed key-value / NoSQL database built for predictable low latency at scale. It stores and serves records over its native client protocol and ships with the aql, asadm and asinfo command-line tools. The cloudimg image installs the stock upstream Aerospike Community Edition 8.1.2.3 server (aerospike/aerospike-server, AGPL-3.0) plus the matching aerospike-tools, runs it as a single-node cluster (cluster of 1) with one test namespace, and persists the keyspace to a dedicated Azure data disk at /opt/aerospike/data. Backed by 24/7 cloudimg support.

What is included:

• Aerospike Community Edition 8.1.2.3 server (asd) plus aerospike-tools (aql, asadm, asinfo)
• A single-node cluster with one test namespace, replication-factor 1
• Persistent storage on a dedicated 16 GiB Azure data disk mounted at /opt/aerospike/data
• Loopback-only listener on port 3000 (not exposed publicly)
• 24/7 cloudimg support

This is a datastore product: Aerospike listens on 127.0.0.1:3000 only. Community Edition has no built-in authentication (that is an Enterprise-only feature), so the port is not opened to the internet - connect locally on the VM or over an SSH tunnel.

Prerequisites

An active Azure subscription, an SSH key pair, and a VNet + subnet in the target region. Standard_B2s (2 vCPU / 4 GiB RAM) is a good starting point. NSG inbound: allow 22/tcp from your management network. No inbound application ports are needed because Aerospike is reached over the SSH tunnel.

Step 1 - Deploy from the Azure Marketplace

Sign in to the Azure Portal, choose Create a resource, search the Marketplace for Aerospike Community Edition by cloudimg, and select Create. On Basics pick your subscription, resource group, region and size; under Administrator account choose SSH public key and paste your key; under Inbound port rules allow SSH (22) only. Then Review + create -> Create.

Step 2 - Deploy from the Azure CLI

az vm create \
  --resource-group <your-rg> \
  --name aerospike \
  --image <marketplace-image-urn> \
  --size Standard_B2s \
  --admin-username azureuser \
  --ssh-key-values ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub \
  --vnet-name <your-vnet> --subnet <your-subnet> \
  --public-ip-sku Standard

Step 3 - Connect to your VM

ssh azureuser@<vm-public-ip>

Step 4 - Confirm Aerospike is installed and running

asd --version
systemctl is-active aerospike
asinfo -h 127.0.0.1 -v status

You should see the Community Edition build, an active service, and a node that reports ok:

Aerospike Community Edition build 8.1.2.3
active
ok

Step 5 - Inspect the node, cluster and namespace

asadm is the Aerospike admin console. Print the network view (one node, cluster size 1) and the namespace object counts:

asadm -h 127.0.0.1 -e "info network; info namespace object"

~~~ network ~~~
          Node|         Node ID|            IP|    Build|Migrations|Cluster Size|Principal      |Uptime
localhost:3000|*BB9587F27482200|127.0.0.1:3000|C-8.1.2.3|   0.000  |           1|BB9587F27482200|00:00:48

~~~ namespace object ~~~
Namespace|          Node|Repl Factor|Total Records
test     |localhost:3000|          1|      0.000

The C- build prefix confirms this is Community Edition, Cluster Size 1 confirms a healthy single-node cluster, and test is the ready namespace.

Step 6 - Store and retrieve data with aql

aql is the Aerospike query tool. List the namespaces, insert a record into test, then read it back:

aql -h 127.0.0.1 -c "SHOW NAMESPACES"
aql -h 127.0.0.1 -c "INSERT INTO test.demo (PK, user, city) VALUES ('u1', 'ada', 'london')"
aql -h 127.0.0.1 -c "SELECT * FROM test.demo WHERE PK='u1'"

+------------+
| namespaces |
+------------+
| "test"     |
+------------+

OK, 1 record affected.

+------+-------+----------+
| PK   | user  | city     |
+------+-------+----------+
| "u1" | "ada" | "london" |
+------+-------+----------+
1 row in set (0.001 secs)

The record you PUT comes back exactly - the database is storing and serving data.

Step 7 - Connect remotely over an SSH tunnel

Aerospike listens on 127.0.0.1:3000 only and is not exposed publicly - this is the secure default, because Community Edition has no authentication. To reach it from your workstation, open an SSH tunnel and point a local Aerospike client (or the tools) at 127.0.0.1:3000:

# On your workstation:
ssh -L 3000:127.0.0.1:3000 azureuser@<vm-public-ip>

# In another terminal, with local aerospike-tools:
asinfo -h 127.0.0.1 -p 3000 -v namespaces

test

The per-VM connection details are recorded at first boot in a root-only file:

sudo cat /root/aerospike-connection.txt

For production remote access without a tunnel, bind Aerospike to a private NIC on a locked-down subnet, or run the client applications inside the same VNet. Never expose port 3000 to the internet, because Community Edition has no authentication or transport encryption.

Maintenance

• Persistence: the test namespace persists to /opt/aerospike/data/test.dat on the dedicated data disk, so the keyspace survives reboots and the volume is independently resizable.
• Configuration: edit /etc/aerospike/aerospike.conf (for example the namespace storage size, additional namespaces, or replication-factor) and run sudo systemctl restart aerospike.
• Health: asinfo -v status returns ok on a healthy node; asadm -e info shows the cluster and namespace at a glance; logs are in the journal (journalctl -u aerospike).
• Security patches: unattended-upgrades remains enabled so the OS continues to receive security updates automatically.
• Upgrading to Enterprise: Community Edition has no authentication, authorization or TLS. For those features, cross-datacenter replication or strong consistency, evaluate Aerospike Enterprise (a separate commercial product from Aerospike).

Source code

Aerospike Community Edition is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0). This image ships the stock, unmodified upstream server; all cloudimg configuration is external, in /etc/aerospike/aerospike.conf. The corresponding source for the server in this image is available at github.com/aerospike/aerospike-server (release 8.1.2.3).

Support

cloudimg provides 24/7 expert support for this image. Contact support@cloudimg.co.uk.

Aerospike is a trademark of Aerospike, Inc. This image ships Aerospike Community Edition and is provided by cloudimg; it is not affiliated with or endorsed by Aerospike, Inc.