Apache Dubbo Admin on Ubuntu 24.04 on Azure User Guide

Overview

Apache Dubbo is a high-performance RPC and microservice framework. Dubbo Admin is its web console and control plane: it reads service registrations, routing rules, dynamic configuration and metadata from a registry and presents them in a browser dashboard for governing a Dubbo service mesh. The cloudimg image installs Dubbo Admin 0.6.0 as a Spring Boot application that serves both the Vue web UI and the REST API, backed by a local Apache ZooKeeper 3.9 registry. Dubbo Admin binds to 127.0.0.1:38080 and is fronted by an nginx reverse proxy on TCP 80. A unique administrator password is generated on the first boot of every VM. Backed by 24/7 cloudimg support.

What is included:

• Apache Dubbo Admin 0.6.0 (Spring Boot application serving the Vue web console and the REST API)
• A local Apache ZooKeeper 3.9 registry acting as the registry, config-center and metadata-report
• OpenJDK (JDK 17 to build the image, JDK 11 as the Dubbo Admin runtime)
• A dedicated Azure data disk at /var/lib/dubbo holding the ZooKeeper data and the Dubbo Admin runtime config, separate from the OS disk and re-provisioned with every VM
• nginx reverse proxy on :80 plus an unauthenticated /health endpoint for load-balancer probes
• Per-VM root admin password generated at first boot, in a root-only file
• zookeeper.service, dubbo-admin.service and nginx.service as systemd units, enabled and active
• 24/7 cloudimg support

Prerequisites

An active Azure subscription, an SSH key pair, and a VNet plus subnet in the target region. Standard_B2ms (2 vCPU / 8 GiB RAM) is a good starting point because the ZooKeeper and Dubbo Admin JVMs run together. NSG inbound: allow 22/tcp from your management network and 80/tcp from the operators who reach the console (front port 80 with TLS for public exposure - see Enabling HTTPS).

Step 1 - Deploy from the Azure Marketplace

Sign in to the Azure Portal, choose Create a resource, search the Marketplace for Apache Dubbo Admin 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) and HTTP (80). Review the dedicated data disk on the Disks tab, then Review + create then Create.

Step 2 - Deploy from the Azure CLI

az vm create \
  --resource-group your-rg \
  --name dubbo-admin \
  --image cloudimg:apache-dubbo-ubuntu-24-04:default:latest \
  --size Standard_B2ms \
  --admin-username azureuser \
  --generate-ssh-keys \
  --public-ip-sku Standard

Then open port 80 to the networks that need the console:

az vm open-port --resource-group <your-rg> --name dubbo-admin --port 80 --source-ip-prefix <your-mgmt-cidr>

Step 3 - Retrieve the per-VM admin password

A unique root administrator password is generated on the first boot of every VM and written to a root-only file. SSH in and read it:

ssh azureuser@<public-ip>

sudo cat /root/dubbo-credentials.txt

The file lists the console URL, the username (root) and the per-VM password:

Keep this password safe - it is the administrator login for the Dubbo Admin console.

Step 4 - Confirm the services are running

The image ships three systemd units that come up automatically: the ZooKeeper registry, the Dubbo Admin application and the nginx reverse proxy. Confirm they are active and that the health endpoint answers:

systemctl is-active zookeeper.service dubbo-admin.service nginx.service

curl -s -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/health

A healthy appliance reports every unit active and returns 200 from /health:

Step 5 - Sign in to the web console

Browse to http://<your-vm-public-ip>/ and sign in with the username root and the per-VM password from Step 3.

The Dubbo Admin login API can also be exercised from the shell. The console authenticates with GET /api/dev/user/login and returns a signed JWT on success; a wrong password is rejected with HTTP 401. To try it yourself, read the password from /root/dubbo-credentials.txt and call the endpoint, for example curl --get --data-urlencode 'userName=root' --data-urlencode 'password=<your-per-VM-password>' http://127.0.0.1/api/dev/user/login (replace the placeholder with the real value). The round-trip looks like this:

Step 6 - Browse registered services

The Search service name screen lists every service registered in the local ZooKeeper registry. Enter * and click Search to list everything, or type a service name to filter. Each row shows the service interface, group, version, owning application and registry source.

Click DETAIL on any service to inspect its providers, consumers and metadata - the bound host and port, configured timeout, serialization, weight and the method signatures the provider exposes.

Step 7 - Manage routing and configuration rules

Under Service Governance the console manages the rules Dubbo enforces at runtime: Condition Rule and Tag Rule routing, Mesh Rule, Black White List access control, Dynamic Config, Weight Adjust and Load Balance. Click CREATE on the Condition Rule page to author a routing rule in the embedded YAML editor, scoped to a service interface, version and group.

Rules you create here are written into the local ZooKeeper config-center and applied to the Dubbo services that read from it.

Persistence - the dedicated data disk

The ZooKeeper transaction log and snapshots, plus the Dubbo Admin runtime configuration, live on a dedicated Azure data disk mounted at /var/lib/dubbo, separate from the OS disk:

df -h /var/lib/dubbo

ls /var/lib/dubbo

Because the registry state lives on its own disk, it survives OS-disk operations and can be resized independently. The disk is captured into the image and re-provisioned on every VM.

Enabling HTTPS

The image serves plain HTTP on port 80. For any non-trivial deployment, terminate TLS in nginx with your own domain and certificate. Install certbot and request a certificate for your domain:

sudo snap install --classic certbot && sudo certbot --nginx -d <your-domain>

certbot edits the nginx site to listen on 443 with your certificate and sets up automatic renewal. After enabling TLS, restrict port 80 in the NSG to the certbot HTTP-01 challenge or redirect it to 443.

Maintenance

Restart the stack or follow the logs with the standard systemd tooling:

sudo systemctl restart dubbo-admin.service

sudo journalctl -u dubbo-admin.service -n 50 --no-pager

The ZooKeeper registry is managed the same way through zookeeper.service. Operating-system security updates are delivered through Ubuntu unattended-upgrades, which remains enabled on the image.

Support

This image is maintained by cloudimg with 24/7 support. Contact support@cloudimg.co.uk for assistance with deployment, configuration or maintenance.