Setup and installation of 'Dify AI: Build & Launch GenAI Apps' on Azure

This section describes how to launch and connect to ‘Dify AI: Build & Launch GenAI Apps’ VM solution on Azure.

1. Open Dify AI: Build & Launch GenAI Apps VM listing on Azure Marketplace.

2. Click on Get It Now

• Login with your credentials, provide the details here. Once done click on Continue.

• It will take you to the Product details page. Click on Create.

• Select a Resource group for your virtual machine

• Select a Region where you want to launch the VM(such as East US)

• Note: If you see “This image is not compatible with selected security type. To keep trusted launch virtual machines, select a compatible image. Otherwise change your security type back to Standard” error message below the Image name as shown in the screenshot below then please change the Security type to Standard.

• Optionally change the number of cores and amount of memory.

Minimum VM Specs : 8GB vRAM / 2vCPU

Select the Authentication type as Password and enter Username as ubuntu and Password of your choice.

• Optionally change the OS disk size and its type. By default the VM comes with 30GB of disk.

• Optionally change the network and subnetwork names. Be sure that whichever network you specify has ports 22 (for ssh), 3389 (for RDP) and 443 (for HTTPS) exposed.

The VM comes with the preconfigured NSG rules. You can check them by clicking on Create New option available under the security group option.

• Optionally go to the Management, Advanced and Tags tabs for any advance settings you want for the VM.
• Click on Review + create and then click on Create when you are done.
  Virtual Machine will begin deploying.

3. A summary page displays when the virtual machine is successfully created. Click on Go to resource link to go to the resource page. It will open an overview page of virtual machine.

4. If you want to update your password then open up the left navigation pane, select Run command, select RunShellScript and enter following command to change the password of the vm .

sudo echo ubuntu:yourpassword | chpasswd

Now the password for ubuntu user is set, you can SSH to the VM. To do so, first note the public IP address of the VM from VM details page as highlighted below

Open putty, paste the IP address and click on Open.

login as ubuntu and provide the password for ‘ubuntu’ user.

5. You can also connect to the VM’s desktop environment from any local windows machine using RDP protocol or local linux machine using Remmina.

6. To connect using RDP via Windows Machine, first note the public IP address of the VM from VM details page as highlighted below

7. Then From your local windows machine, goto “start” menu, in the search box type and select “Remote desktop connection”.
   In the “Remote Desktop connection” wizard, copy the public IP address and click connect

8. This will connect you to the VM’s desktop environment. Provide the username (e.g “ubuntu”) and the password set in the step4 to authenticate. Click OK

9. Now you are connected to the out of box Dify AI: Build & Launch GenAI Apps VM’s desktop environment via Windows Machine.

10. To connect using RDP via Linux machine, first note the external IP of the VM from VM details page, then from your local Linux machine, goto menu, in the search box type and select “Remmina”.

Note: If you don’t have Remmina installed on your Linux machine, first Install Remmina as per your linux distribution.

11. In the “Remmina Remote Desktop Client” wizard, select the RDP option from dropdown and paste the external ip and click enter.

12. This will connect you to the VM’s desktop environment. Provide “ubuntu” as the userid and the password set in above reset password step to authenticate. Click OK

13. Now you are connected to out of box Dify AI: Build & Launch GenAI Apps VM’s desktop environment via Linux machine.

14. To access the DifyAI Web Interface, copy the public IP address of the VM and paste it in the browser as https://public_ip_of_vm. Make sure to use https in the URL:

Browser will display a SSL certificate warning message. Accept the certificate warning and Continue.

15. Provide the admin user details here and create your first admin account.

16. Relogin with your new admin account.

17. Now you are logged in to DifyAI Web Interface.

18. Dify is a development platform for AI application based on LLM Apps, when you are using Dify for the first time, you need to go to Settings —> Model Providers to add and configure the LLM you are going to use.

Dify supports major model providers like OpenAI’s GPT series and Anthropic’s Claude series. Each model’s capabilities and parameters differ, so select a model provider that suits your application’s needs. Obtain the API key from the model provider’s official website before using it in Dify. Read More

• Under settings you will see different options like -

• Members: allows you to add more members

• Data source: You can add different Data Sources from Data Source tab as shown in the screenshot.

• API extensions: The API-Based Extension in Dify AI empowers developers to augment and customize application functionalities by integrating external APIs and services.

• Language: Switch between different languages for your DifyAI UI from the language option given here.

19. Explore:

    The Explore tab in the Dify AI user interface is designed to help users discover and utilize pre-built AI application templates. These templates cover various domains such as human resources, assistants, translation, programming, and writing.

20. Studio:

    The Studio tab in Dify AI serves as a comprehensive interface for developing, managing, and deploying AI applications powered by large language models (LLMs) like GPT. It integrates various tools and features to streamline the AI application development process.

21. Knowledge:

Dify’s Knowledge feature visualizes each stage of the RAG pipeline, providing a friendly UI for application builders to easily manage personal or team knowledge. It also allows for seamless integration into AI applications.

Developers can upload internal company documents, FAQs, and standard working guides, then process them into structured data that large language models (LLMs) can query. Read more

22. Tools:

The Tools tab in Dify AI is designed to extend the functionality of your AI applications by integrating external services and APIs. These tools can be utilized within Chatflow, Workflow, and Agent applications to perform specific tasks, such as web searches, data extraction, or image generation

23. Plugins:

    Plugin is a more developer-friendly and highly extensible third-party service extension module. It contains five distinct plugin types, each designed to solve well-defined scenarios, giving developers limitless freedom to customize and enhance Dify applications.

    Additionally, the plugin system is designed to be easily shared. You can distribute your plugins via the Dify Marketplace, GitHub, or as a Local file package. Read more

For more details, please visit Official Documentation page

For more details on customizing environment variables, please refer to Overview of environment file