Configuration Guide

HASTE environments are configured with the Azure Developer CLI. Every setting is supplied with azd env set <NAME> <value> before azd up; the values are read by infra/main.bicepparam at provision time and by the deploy hooks in deploy/. Defaults live in main.bicepparam, so an unset variable falls back to a sensible value.

This guide documents each configuration mode. For the end-to-end workflow, see setup/README.md and deployment.md.

Contents

• Core settings

• Batch (create vs. bring-your-own)

• Batch image tags and pool immutability

• Shared multi-tenant GPU pools

• Email sender domain

• Front Door

• Development mode

• First-admin bootstrap

• Cleaning up an environment

Core settings

Variable	Default	Purpose
HASTE_RESOURCE_PREFIX	haste	Prefix for all resource names. Generic default; override per deployment.
HASTE_RANDOM_SUFFIX	dev1	Per-environment suffix; keeps names unique.
AZURE_LOCATION	westus2	Azure region.
HASTE_APIM_PUBLISHER_EMAIL	—	APIM publisher email (required).
HASTE_APIM_PUBLISHER_NAME	AI For Good Lab	APIM publisher name.
HASTE_SHARED_RESOURCE_GROUP	env RG	Resource group holding bring-your-own shared resources (Batch, ACR).
HASTE_SHARED_ACR_NAME	—	Shared Azure Container Registry name (without .azurecr.io).

Resource names are HASTE_RESOURCE_PREFIX + HASTE_RANDOM_SUFFIX based (not azd’s resourceToken) so what-if stays clean against existing deployments.

Batch (create vs. bring-your-own)

HASTE runs GPU workloads on Azure Batch. Both the Batch account and the GPU pool can either be created in the environment resource group or reused from a shared resource group.

Variable	Default	Values	Purpose
HASTE_BATCH_ACCOUNT_MODE	Create	Create | Existing	Create a Batch account in the env RG, or reference a shared one.
HASTE_EXISTING_BATCH_ACCOUNT	—	account name	Required when the account mode is Existing; looked up in HASTE_SHARED_RESOURCE_GROUP.
HASTE_BATCH_POOL_MODE	Create	Create | Existing	Create the GPU pool, or reference an existing one.
HASTE_EXISTING_BATCH_POOL_ID	—	pool resource id	Required when the pool mode is Existing.

Additional pool parameters (batchPoolVmSize, batchPoolMaxNodes, batchPoolSubnetName) have defaults in infra/main.bicep and can be overridden by adding them to main.bicepparam.

Common combinations:

• Self-contained fork — HASTE_BATCH_ACCOUNT_MODE=Create and HASTE_BATCH_POOL_MODE=Create create a Batch account and a GPU pool in the environment resource group.

• Shared account, own pool — HASTE_BATCH_ACCOUNT_MODE=Existing with HASTE_BATCH_POOL_MODE=Create creates only a new named pool on the shared account, in the shared resource group, via a cross-RG-scoped sub-module. It never modifies the account or sibling pools.

• Shared account and pool — both set to Existing reference the account and pool for app-settings wiring only; nothing is written to the shared resource group.

When the pool is created on a shared account, review what-if against both the environment resource group and HASTE_SHARED_RESOURCE_GROUP, and make sure the deploy identity has pool-write on the shared account.

Batch image tags and pool immutability

The training and imageryprep container images feed two places: the Batch pool (as pre-fetched containerImageNames) and the api/queues app settings (which tell the runner what tag to launch tasks with).

Variable	Default	Purpose
HASTE_TRAINING_IMAGE	hastetraining:1.4.1	Training image repo:tag.
HASTE_IMAGERYPREP_IMAGE	hasteimageryprep:1.4.1	Imageryprep image repo:tag.

A Batch pool’s deploymentConfiguration is immutable — you cannot change a pool’s image tags after creation. Two consequences:

• Bumping a tag requires recreating the pool (delete and re-provision), not an in-place update.

• Reusing a shared pool (HASTE_BATCH_POOL_MODE=Existing) means the app settings must use a tag the pool and the shared ACR actually have. This is a mostly harmless constraint, because each task submits its own image tag at runtime and Batch pulls it if the node doesn’t already have it — but the app settings still need a valid tag.

To make this transparent, the preprovision hook deploy/resolve-batch-image-tags.ps1 reads the existing pool’s containerImageNames and sets HASTE_TRAINING_IMAGE / HASTE_IMAGERYPREP_IMAGE for you when HASTE_BATCH_POOL_MODE=Existing. It runs only in that mode and never clobbers a tag you set explicitly — set either variable yourself to override the auto-resolved value.

Shared multi-tenant GPU pools

For deployments that run many environments against scarce GPU quota, HASTE supports a small set of shared, multi-tenant Batch pools (H100 for training, T4 for inference/imageryprep + spillover) instead of one pool per environment, so GPU quota is pooled and rationed centrally rather than fragmented. See spec/features/batch-compute-expansion/ for the full design.

Creating the pools. The shared pools are provisioned by infra/shared-pools.bicep — a standalone deployment into the shared Batch account’s resource group, separate from azd up — configured by infra/shared-pools.bicepparam:

az deployment group create -g <shared-rg> \
  --parameters infra/shared-pools.bicepparam

Pools are named <prefix>-shared-<group>-<tier>-pool (e.g. the dev-group H100 pool); HASTE_SHARED_GROUP selects the group (dev, demo, …). They autoscale on dedicated or low-priority nodes (configurable via HASTE_SHARED_NODE_TYPE) within a central per-pool core-quota ceiling. A scarce tier (H100) can keep a warm floor instead of scaling to zero — under regional GPU evaluation** until capacity frees, whereas a one-shot fixed resize gets stuck in its error state. The pool identity is used only for ACR pull (haste-shared-acr-umi) — it holds no storage access.

Shared-pool deploy knobs (env vars read by shared-pools.bicep):

Variable	Default	Purpose
HASTE_SHARED_GROUP	dev	Pool group (dev, demo, …) — drives the pool names.
HASTE_SHARED_NODE_TYPE	LowPriority	Node cost tier: LowPriority (spot) or Dedicated.
HASTE_SHARED_H100_SCALE_MODE	Autoscale	Autoscale, or Fixed reserved baseline for the scarce H100 tier.
HASTE_SHARED_H100_MIN_NODES	0	H100 autoscale floor (>0 keeps chasing/holding a warm node).
HASTE_SHARED_T4_MIN_NODES / HASTE_SHARED_T4_MAX_NODES	0 / 2	T4 autoscale floor / cap.
HASTE_SHARED_BATCH_SUBNET_ID	—	Shared hub batch-subnet to VNet-inject both pools into (see Blob↔Batch networking below).

Data isolation. Tenants share compute but not data: each job mints a time-limited user-delegation SAS scoped to its own storage container, so a tenant’s task can never read another tenant’s data. This requires the submitting Function App identity to hold Storage Blob Delegator on its storage account (granted in functionApp.bicep).

Blob↔Batch networking. SAS is an auth boundary, not network reach — each tenant storage is Deny, so the pools must additionally be network-allowed to it or blob I/O fails with 403 AuthorizationFailure. The shared pools are VNet-injected into a shared hub batch-subnet (haste-hub-vnet/batch-subnet, carrying the Microsoft.Storage service endpoint), and each tenant’s storage allowlists that subnet with a VNet rule. Onboarding a new env is just that one storage rule — wired in storage.bicep via HASTE_SHARED_BATCH_SUBNET_ID so it lands on azd provision; the shared pools are never touched. Two one-time prerequisites per hub (not per env): create the subnet, and grant the Microsoft Azure Batch service principal Network Contributor on it so Batch can VNet-inject. HASTE_SHARED_BATCH_SUBNET_ID is read by both the shared-pools deploy (which subnet to inject the pools into) and each env deploy (which subnet its storage allowlists). Full design: networking.md.

Per-environment app settings (set on the api/queues Function Apps to opt an environment into the shared pools — all default to the legacy single-pool, pool-identity behavior, so existing environments are unaffected until opted in):

Variable	Default	Purpose
AZURE_BATCH_TRAINING_POOL_IDS	AZURE_BATCH_TRAINING_POOL_ID	Ordered candidate pools for training (preference-first, spillover-second), comma-separated.
AZURE_BATCH_INFERENCE_POOL_IDS	training pool	Ordered candidate pools for inference/embedding (e.g. T4-first).
AZURE_BATCH_IMAGERYPREP_POOL_IDS	AZURE_BATCH_IMAGERYPREP_POOL_ID	Ordered candidate pools for imageryprep/artifacts.
AZURE_BATCH_USE_SAS	false	Use per-job user-delegation SAS for blob I/O instead of the pool’s managed identity. Required for shared pools.
AZURE_BATCH_MANAGE_POOLS	true	Whether the runner auto-creates/resizes its pool. Set false for pre-created autoscale pools (resize fails on an autoscale pool).

The runner picks a pool from the candidate list at submit time — the first with an idle node, otherwise the preferred (first) pool, which scales up / queues.

These are emitted by both deploy paths: set them as GitHub Environment secrets (BATCH_TRAINING_POOL_IDS, BATCH_INFERENCE_POOL_IDS, BATCH_IMAGERYPREP_POOL_IDS, BATCH_USE_SAS, BATCH_MANAGE_POOLS, BATCH_TRAINING_POOL_ID, BATCH_IMAGERYPREP_POOL_ID) for deploy-apps.yml, or as the corresponding infra/main.bicepparam values for the Bicep path.

Secrets, not variables. Resource naming is treated as sensitive in this repo (as RESOURCE_PREFIX, LOCATION and friends already are). GitHub masks secret values in Actions logs but does not mask variables, and this repo’s workflow logs are public.

*_POOL_ID (singular) also names the Batch job. TRAINING_BATCH_JOB_ID and friends default to the matching pool id, so the value must be identical on the api and queues apps — the queues app submits under that job id and the api app reads status back from it.

Job ids are scoped to the selected pool. A Batch job is permanently bound to the pool it was created against and can only be re-pointed while it has no active tasks, so one static job id cannot span pools. When routing across multiple candidates, the runner derives the job id from the pool the task was routed to — one job per pool. Environments with a single candidate pool keep their existing job id unchanged. This is why a task that spills over to a second pool no longer collides with the job created on the preferred pool.

Keeping settings in sync

AZURE_BATCH_REGISTRY_SERVER was previously emitted as AZURE_BATCH_REGISTRY_SERVER_URL. The legacy name is still read as a fallback (and any https:// prefix is stripped), so environments provisioned before the rename keep working — but operators should rename the application setting.

Any variable the code requires must be emitted by both deploy_apps.sh and functions.bicep. check_env_drift.py enforces this on every PR via the Config drift workflow.

Email sender domain

The email backend (Azure Communication Services) is provisioned in-IaC, so its connection string is a deploy-time output rather than a manually pasted secret.

Variable	Default	Values	Purpose
HASTE_EMAIL_SENDER_DOMAIN_TYPE	AzureManaged	AzureManaged | Custom	Sender-domain strategy.
HASTE_EMAIL_CUSTOM_DOMAIN	—	domain	Required when the type is Custom (e.g. notifications.example.com).

• AzureManaged provisions an azurecomm.net sender domain with no DNS step — the default, best for forks and quick environments.

• Custom provisions a custom sender domain. DNS verification (TXT/SPF/DKIM records) lives in the customer’s DNS zone and is an out-of-band, one-time step.

No Key Vault is introduced; the connection string is wired from a listKeys() output to the Function App settings.

Front Door

Azure Front Door and its WAF are a feature-flagged module, deployed only when enabled.

Variable	Default	Purpose
HASTE_ENABLE_FRONT_DOOR	false	Provision Front Door + WAF in front of the app.

Development mode

Development mode is a dev-only switch. It must never be true in production.

Variable	Default	Purpose
HASTE_DEVELOPMENT_MODE	false	Anonymous Function auth + auto-provisioning of users as administrators.

When true, the API uses anonymous auth and GetUserById auto-creates any unknown caller as an administrator — convenient for local and throwaway environments, unacceptable for production. When false (the default and the production setting), Functions are key-protected (the postdeploy hook injects the host key into the APIM backends) and unknown users are rejected until an admin adds them.

The Docker Compose UI image pre-fills administrators in the SWA emulator’s mock-login form. The source staticwebapp.config.json used for production is unchanged.

First-admin bootstrap

Production uses DEVELOPMENT_MODE=false, so users are managed explicitly and are not auto-provisioned as administrators. That creates a bootstrap problem: an admin is needed to add the first users, but a fresh environment has none. The postdeploy hooks solve it by seeding a first admin.

Variable	Default	Purpose
HASTE_FIRST_ADMIN_EMAIL	signed-in user	Email of the first administrator.

• Interactive deploys — if HASTE_FIRST_ADMIN_EMAIL is unset, the seed uses the signed-in deployer’s email (deploy/seed-storage-defaults.ps1), writes it into users_acl.json as an administrator, and invites it to the Static Web App (deploy/invite-user.ps1).

• Non-interactive / CI / service-principal deploys — there is no signed-in user, so set HASTE_FIRST_ADMIN_EMAIL. Without it, the first-admin seed is skipped and the environment has no administrator.

Both hooks are idempotent (skip-if-exists / dedup). After the first admin signs in, subsequent users are added through the app’s admin user-management flow — the first-admin seed is a one-time bootstrap, not the ongoing mechanism.

Cleaning up an environment

Deleting an environment does not immediately free its name. APIM, Front Door, and Batch resources are soft-deleted and retained by Azure for a day or two, so you cannot reuse the same HASTE_RESOURCE_PREFIX + HASTE_RANDOM_SUFFIX combination right away.

To tear down and reuse a name sooner:

# Delete the environment's resources.
azd down --force --purge

# APIM must be purged from its soft-deleted state before the name is free.
az apim deletedservice list -o table
az apim deletedservice purge --service-name <name-from-the-list> --location <region>

azd down --purge purges soft-deletable resources it manages; a shared Batch pool created on a shared account is additive, so remove it explicitly if it is no longer needed. Otherwise, choose a new suffix and let Azure auto-purge the old resources.