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Configure Read OCR Docker containers

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You can configure the Azure AI Vision Read OCR container's runtime environment by using the docker run command arguments. This container has several required settings, along with a few optional settings. Several examples of the command are available. The container-specific settings are the billing settings.

Configuration settings

The container has the following configuration settings:

Required Setting Purpose
Yes ApiKey Tracks billing information.
No ApplicationInsights Enables adding Azure Application Insights telemetry support to your container.
Yes Billing Specifies the endpoint URI of the service resource on Azure.
Yes Eula Indicates that you've accepted the license for the container.
No Fluentd Writes log and, optionally, metric data to a Fluentd server.
No HTTP Proxy Configures an HTTP proxy for making outbound requests.
No Logging Provides ASP.NET Core logging support for your container.
No Mounts Reads and writes data from the host computer to the container and from the container back to the host computer.

Important

The ApiKey, Billing, and Eula settings are used together, and you must provide valid values for all three of them; otherwise your container won't start. For more information about using these configuration settings to instantiate a container, see Billing.

The container also has the following container-specific configuration settings:

Required Setting Purpose
No ReadEngineConfig:ResultExpirationPeriod v2.0 containers only. Result expiration period in hours. The default is 48 hours. The setting specifies when the system should clear recognition results. For example, if resultExpirationPeriod=1, the system clears the recognition result 1 hour after the process. If resultExpirationPeriod=0, the system clears the recognition result after the result is retrieved.
No Cache:Redis v2.0 containers only. Enables Redis storage for storing results. A cache is required if multiple read OCR containers are placed behind a load balancer.
No Queue:RabbitMQ v2.0 containers only. Enables RabbitMQ for dispatching tasks. The setting is useful when multiple read OCR containers are placed behind a load balancer.
No Queue:Azure:QueueVisibilityTimeoutInMilliseconds v3.x containers only. The time for a message to be invisible when another worker is processing it.
No Storage::DocumentStore::MongoDB v2.0 containers only. Enables MongoDB for permanent result storage.
No Storage:ObjectStore:AzureBlob:ConnectionString v3.x containers only. Azure blob storage connection string.
No Storage:TimeToLiveInDays v3.x containers only. Result expiration period in days. The setting specifies when the system should clear recognition results. The default is 2 days, which means any result live for longer than that period is not guaranteed to be successfully retrieved. The value is integer and it must be between 1 day to 7 days.
No StorageTimeToLiveInMinutes v3.2-model-2021-09-30-preview and new containers. Result expiration period in minutes. The setting specifies when the system should clear recognition results. The default is 2 days (2880 minutes), which means any result live for longer than that period is not guaranteed to be successfully retrieved. The value is integer and it must be between 60 minutes to 7 days (10080 minutes).
No Task:MaxRunningTimeSpanInMinutes v3.x containers only. Maximum running time for a single request. The default is 60 minutes.
No EnableSyncNTPServer v3.x containers only, except for v3.2-model-2021-09-30-preview and newer containers. Enables the NTP server synchronization mechanism, which ensures synchronization between the system time and expected task runtime. Note that this requires external network traffic. The default is true.
No NTPServerAddress v3.x containers only, except for v3.2-model-2021-09-30-preview and newer containers. NTP server for the time sync-up. The default is time.windows.com.
No Mounts:Shared v3.x containers only. Local folder for storing recognition result. The default is /share. For running container without using Azure blob storage, we recommend mounting a volume to this folder to ensure you have enough space for the recognition results.

ApiKey configuration setting

The ApiKey setting specifies the Vision resource key used to track billing information for the container. You must specify a value for the ApiKey and the value must be a valid key for the Vision resource specified for the Billing configuration setting.

This setting can be found in the following place:

  • Azure portal: Azure AI services Resource Management, under Keys

ApplicationInsights setting

The ApplicationInsights setting allows you to add Azure Application Insights telemetry support to your container. Application Insights provides in-depth monitoring of your container. You can easily monitor your container for availability, performance, and usage. You can also quickly identify and diagnose errors in your container.

The following table describes the configuration settings supported under the ApplicationInsights section.

Required Name Data type Description
No InstrumentationKey String The instrumentation key of the Application Insights instance to which telemetry data for the container is sent. For more information, see Application Insights for ASP.NET Core.

Example:
InstrumentationKey=123456789

Billing configuration setting

The Billing setting specifies the endpoint URI of the Azure AI services resource on Azure used to meter billing information for the container. You must specify a value for this configuration setting, and the value must be a valid endpoint URI for an Azure AI services resource on Azure. The container reports usage about every 10 to 15 minutes.

This setting can be found in the following place:

  • Azure portal: Azure AI services Overview, labeled Endpoint

Remember to add the vision/<version> routing to the endpoint URI as shown in the following table.

Required Name Data type Description
Yes Billing String Billing endpoint URI

Example:
Billing=https://westcentralus.api.cognitive.microsoft.com/vision/v3.2

Eula setting

The Eula setting indicates that you've accepted the license for the container. You must specify a value for this configuration setting, and the value must be set to accept.

Required Name Data type Description
Yes Eula String License acceptance

Example:
Eula=accept

Azure AI services containers are licensed under your agreement governing your use of Azure. If you do not have an existing agreement governing your use of Azure, you agree that your agreement governing use of Azure is the Microsoft Online Subscription Agreement, which incorporates the Online Services Terms. For previews, you also agree to the Supplemental Terms of Use for Microsoft Azure Previews. By using the container you agree to these terms.

Fluentd settings

Fluentd is an open-source data collector for unified logging. The Fluentd settings manage the container's connection to a Fluentd server. The container includes a Fluentd logging provider, which allows your container to write logs and, optionally, metric data to a Fluentd server.

The following table describes the configuration settings supported under the Fluentd section.

Name Data type Description
Host String The IP address or DNS host name of the Fluentd server.
Port Integer The port of the Fluentd server.
The default value is 24224.
HeartbeatMs Integer The heartbeat interval, in milliseconds. If no event traffic has been sent before this interval expires, a heartbeat is sent to the Fluentd server. The default value is 60000 milliseconds (1 minute).
SendBufferSize Integer The network buffer space, in bytes, allocated for send operations. The default value is 32768 bytes (32 kilobytes).
TlsConnectionEstablishmentTimeoutMs Integer The timeout, in milliseconds, to establish a SSL/TLS connection with the Fluentd server. The default value is 10000 milliseconds (10 seconds).
If UseTLS is set to false, this value is ignored.
UseTLS Boolean Indicates whether the container should use SSL/TLS for communicating with the Fluentd server. The default value is false.

HTTP proxy credentials settings

If you need to configure an HTTP proxy for making outbound requests, use these two arguments:

Name Data type Description
HTTP_PROXY string The proxy to use, for example, http://proxy:8888
<proxy-url>
HTTP_PROXY_CREDS string Any credentials needed to authenticate against the proxy, for example, username:password. This value must be in lower-case.
<proxy-user> string The user for the proxy.
<proxy-password> string The password associated with <proxy-user> for the proxy. 
docker run --rm -it -p 5000:5000 \
--memory 2g --cpus 1 \
--mount type=bind,src=/home/azureuser/output,target=/output \
<registry-location>/<image-name> \
Eula=accept \
Billing=<endpoint> \
ApiKey=<api-key> \
HTTP_PROXY=<proxy-url> \
HTTP_PROXY_CREDS=<proxy-user>:<proxy-password> \

Logging settings

The Logging settings manage ASP.NET Core logging support for your container. You can use the same configuration settings and values for your container that you use for an ASP.NET Core application.

The following logging providers are supported by the container:

Provider Purpose
Console The ASP.NET Core Console logging provider. All of the ASP.NET Core configuration settings and default values for this logging provider are supported.
Debug The ASP.NET Core Debug logging provider. All of the ASP.NET Core configuration settings and default values for this logging provider are supported.
Disk The JSON logging provider. This logging provider writes log data to the output mount.

This container command stores logging information in the JSON format to the output mount:

docker run --rm -it -p 5000:5000 \
--memory 2g --cpus 1 \
--mount type=bind,src=/home/azureuser/output,target=/output \
<registry-location>/<image-name> \
Eula=accept \
Billing=<endpoint> \
ApiKey=<api-key> \
Logging:Disk:Format=json \
Mounts:Output=/output

This container command shows debugging information, prefixed with dbug, while the container is running:

docker run --rm -it -p 5000:5000 \
--memory 2g --cpus 1 \
<registry-location>/<image-name> \
Eula=accept \
Billing=<endpoint> \
ApiKey=<api-key> \
Logging:Console:LogLevel:Default=Debug

Disk logging

The Disk logging provider supports the following configuration settings:

Name Data type Description
Format String The output format for log files.
Note: This value must be set to json to enable the logging provider. If this value is specified without also specifying an output mount while instantiating a container, an error occurs.
MaxFileSize Integer The maximum size, in megabytes (MB), of a log file. When the size of the current log file meets or exceeds this value, a new log file is started by the logging provider. If -1 is specified, the size of the log file is limited only by the maximum file size, if any, for the output mount. The default value is 1.

For more information about configuring ASP.NET Core logging support, see Settings file configuration.

Mount settings

Use bind mounts to read and write data to and from the container. You can specify an input mount or output mount by specifying the --mount option in the docker run command.

The Azure AI Vision containers don't use input or output mounts to store training or service data.

The exact syntax of the host mount location varies depending on the host operating system. Additionally, the host computer's mount location may not be accessible due to a conflict between permissions used by the Docker service account and the host mount location permissions.

Optional Name Data type Description
Not allowed Input String Azure AI Vision containers do not use this.
Optional Output String The target of the output mount. The default value is /output. This is the location of the logs. This includes container logs.

Example:
--mount type=bind,src=c:\output,target=/output

Example docker run commands

The following examples use the configuration settings to illustrate how to write and use docker run commands. Once running, the container continues to run until you stop it.

  • Line-continuation character: The Docker commands in the following sections use the back slash, \, as a line continuation character. Replace or remove this based on your host operating system's requirements.
  • Argument order: Do not change the order of the arguments unless you are very familiar with Docker containers.

Replace {argument_name} with your own values:

Placeholder Value Format or example
{API_KEY} The endpoint key of the Vision resource on the resource keys page. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
{ENDPOINT_URI} The billing endpoint value is available on the resource overview page. See gather required parameters for explicit examples.

Note

New resources created after July 1, 2019, will use custom subdomain names. For more information and a complete list of regional endpoints, see Custom subdomain names for Azure AI services.

Important

The Eula, Billing, and ApiKey options must be specified to run the container; otherwise, the container won't start. For more information, see Billing. The ApiKey value is the Key from the Vision resource keys page.

Container Docker examples

The following Docker examples are for the Read OCR container.

Basic example

docker run --rm -it -p 5000:5000 --memory 16g --cpus 8 \
mcr.microsoft.com/azure-cognitive-services/vision/read:3.2-model-2022-04-30 \
Eula=accept \
Billing={ENDPOINT_URI} \
ApiKey={API_KEY}

Logging example

docker run --rm -it -p 5000:5000 --memory 16g --cpus 8 \
mcr.microsoft.com/azure-cognitive-services/vision/read:3.2-model-2022-04-30 \
Eula=accept \
Billing={ENDPOINT_URI} \
ApiKey={API_KEY}
Logging:Console:LogLevel:Default=Information

Next steps