Overview of Blockchain and Azure Blockchain Workbench

Introduction 

 

In this article, let’s explore what is a blockchain and Azure Blockchain workbench along with the creation of an Azure Blockchain workbench in the Azure portal. Before getting to the hands-on portion, let’s take an overview of what is an Azure Blockchain.

 

Technology has a great impact and will have an even greater one in the upcoming decades. One of the major upcoming technologies is Blockchain. Blockchain is the next generation of the internet and has many applications. Blockchain is neither a company or software, it is a new way of documenting the information on the internet. Basically, a Blockchain is a distributed database in which the database exists on multiple computers at the same time. As the records keep on growing so does the database too and it is termed as the blocks. The blocks are being linked using cryptography. The main point I want to share is the blockchain is resistant to modification of the data. Each block of the data is being secured and linked to each other with cryptography principles.

 

Azure Blockchain workbench

 

Now let’s take an overview of Azure Blockchain Workbench. The Azure Blockchain workbench is a service that is designed to create & deploy blockchain applications and share the data with organizations. The Azure Blockchain workbench also offers the infrastructure for building blockchain applications for developers, therefore it leads us to enable and create business logic with smart contracts. It is deployed using the solution template in the Azure marketplace and once it’s been deployed, the blockchain workbench provides access to client apps for creating and managing user applications.

 

Prerequisites

• Active Azure Subscription.

Step 1

 

Login in to your Azure portal and Click >> + new resource and Select >> Blockchain and Click >> Azure Blockchain workbench (Preview).

 

 

 

Step 2

 

The following next step is to provide the basic requirements so that blockchain workbench can be created.

 

Provide a Resource prefix name & provide a VM user name.

 

Select >> Authentication type to Password and provide a password to the VM user name.

 

After that provide a database and blockchain password and Select >> OK.

 

 

 

Step 3

 

Proceed to the next step. In advanced settings, leave the values to be the default. If required, you can change the worknode VM size as per your desire and Click >> Ok.

 

 

 

Step 4

 

The Next step is to check on the summary and finally, Click >> create, then the deployment process will take place. Make sure you have time since you have to wait more than 1 hour (90 mins). After that, the deployment process will be successful.

 

 

 

Once the deployment process is successful, the resource group will contain the blockchain resources. Basically, the workbench will be accessed using the web URL for that

Switch to the create a resource group and you can see the resources with app service and we need to select >> App service without the -API suffix.

 

Step 5

 

From the app service, we have created will contain the deployed workbench, copy the URL and paste it in a new tab so that we can be able to see the created workbench with the default domain name.

 

 

Step 6

 

The next step is to register the Blockchain API app registration, for that Switchback to Azure Active Directory and Select App registration and Select >> New registration.

 

 

Provide a name for it and Select >> Accounts in this organization only (Default directory only- single-tenant) and Select >> Register.

 

 

Step 7

 

The next step is to manifest the application roles with the Azure Active Directory for specifying the blockchain workbench administrators. For that generate a GUID for the manifest by Selecting >> Manifest in the manage section and update the appRoles section with the following code and change the Oauth2AllowImplicitFlow value to true.

 

Update the following code in the approles section.

"appRoles": [
   {
      "allowedMemberTypes": [
      "User",
      "Application"
   ],
   "displayName": "Administrator",
   "id": "<A unique GUID>",
   "isEnabled": true,
   "description": "Blockchain Workbench administrator role allows creation of applications, user to role assignments, etc.",
   "value": "Administrator"
   }
],

  

 

 

 

The final step is to save the manifest and for that Select >> save to save the manifest changes.

 

I hope this article, will be useful for you and if you have any queries comment below and thanks for reading.