Cronicle

Prerequisites

You need an active Azure subscription, an SSH key pair, and a VNet with a subnet in the target region.

Standard_B2s (2 vCPU / 4 GiB RAM) is a reasonable starting size. Choose a larger size if you plan to run many concurrent jobs.

Configure the NSG to allow inbound 22/tcp from your management network and 80/tcp (and 443/tcp if you add TLS) for the web UI. The web UI is served over plain HTTP by default, so for production put your own domain and a trusted certificate in front of it (see Maintenance).

Step 1 - Deploy from the Azure Marketplace

Sign in to the Azure Portal, choose Create a resource, search the Marketplace for Cronicle by SecureAnyCloud, and select Create.

On the Basics tab, 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 select Review + create and Create.

Step 2 - Deploy from the Azure CLI

# Accept the Marketplace terms once per subscription (required before the first CLI deploy)
az vm image terms accept --urn sac1647283583153:cronicle-ubuntu-24-04:default:latest
az vm create \
  --resource-group <your-rg> \
  --name cronicle \
  --image sac1647283583153:cronicle-ubuntu-24-04:default:latest \
  --size Standard_B2s \
  --admin-username azureuser \
  --ssh-key-values ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub \
  --vnet-name <your-vnet> --subnet <your-subnet> \
  --public-ip-sku Standard
az vm open-port --resource-group <your-rg> --name cronicle --port 80 --priority 1010

Step 3 - Connect to your VM

ssh azureuser@<vm-public-ip>

Step 4 - Confirm the services are running

systemctl is-active cronicle.service nginx.service ss -tlnp | grep -E '3012|:80 '

Both services report active. Cronicle listens only on the loopback address 127.0.0.1:3012, and nginx on port 80 reverse-proxies to it. The application connector is never exposed directly on a public interface.

Step 5 - Retrieve your admin password

First boot generates a unique Cronicle admin password for your VM and writes it to a root-only file:

sudo cat /root/cronicle-credentials.txt

This file contains CRONICLE_USERNAME (admin), CRONICLE_PASSWORD and the web UI URL. Store the password somewhere safe. The file is mode 0600 and owned by root, so only an administrator can read it.

The embedded Storage that holds your schedule, job history and users lives on the dedicated Azure data disk mounted at /var/lib/cronicle.

Step 6 - Confirm the health endpoints

nginx serves an unauthenticated health endpoint for load balancers and probes, and it fronts the Cronicle app shell:

curl -s http://localhost/healthz
curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'healthz HTTP %{http_code}\n' http://localhost/healthz
curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'root HTTP %{http_code}\n' http://localhost/

The /healthz endpoint returns ok with HTTP 200 and never requires authentication, so it is safe for an Azure Load Balancer health probe. The root path returns HTTP 200, which confirms that Cronicle is up behind nginx and ready for sign-in.

Step 7 - Verify authentication from the command line

Cronicle's login API is a plain JSON POST to /api/user/login. It always returns HTTP 200, and success or failure is carried in the code field of the JSON body (0 on success, plus a session_id).

The following check signs in with the correct per-VM password. For contrast, it also tries the default admin password and a wrong password, and both are rejected. The command embeds your unique password, so run it interactively rather than from a script. Substitute the value of CRONICLE_PASSWORD from Step 5 for <CRONICLE_PASSWORD>:

login() { curl -s -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d "{\"username\":\"admin\",\"password\":\"$1\"}" \
  http://localhost/api/user/login \
  | python3 -c 'import json,sys; d=json.load(sys.stdin); print("code=%s session=%s" % (d.get("code"), bool(d.get("session_id"))))' } echo "per-VM password -> $(login '<CRONICLE_PASSWORD>')" echo "default admin -> $(login 'admin')" echo "wrong password -> $(login 'wrong')"

The correct per-VM password prints code=0 session=True (signed in). The default admin password and a wrong password both print code=login session=False, which shows that the appliance replaced the default login on first boot.

Step 8 - Sign in to the web UI

Browse to http://<vm-public-ip>/. You land on the Cronicle User Login page. Enter admin as the username and the password from Step 5, then select Login.

Step 9 - Explore the Home dashboard

After you sign in, you land on the Home tab. It shows server stats (total events, categories and plugins), a live list of active jobs, and any upcoming scheduled events. From here, open the Schedule tab to manage events.

Step 10 - Create a scheduled event

Select the Schedule tab, then Add Event.... Give the event a title.

Choose a Category (the image ships a ready-made General category), a Target (which server or group to run on) and a Plugin. The image ships Shell Script, HTTP Request and Test Plugin plugins.

Set a schedule, or leave the event disabled and run it on demand, then select Create Event. For example, you can create a Hello World event that uses the built-in Test Plugin.

Step 11 - Run a job and watch the live log

On the Schedule tab, select Run next to your event to launch it immediately. Then select the Running status badge to open its live Job Details page.

Cronicle streams job progress, CPU and memory usage, and the live log in real time over a websocket, so you can watch what a job is doing while it runs. When the job finishes, it moves to the Completed tab with its full log retained.

Step 12 - Confirm data lives on the dedicated disk

Cronicle stores its data under /var/lib/cronicle on the dedicated Azure data disk. This includes the embedded Storage that holds your schedule, job history and users, along with logs and the job queue. The data survives OS changes, and you can resize the disk independently:

findmnt /var/lib/cronicle

A separate Azure data disk backs the mount. The disk is captured into the image and re-provisioned on every VM.

Maintenance

• Password: First boot sets the admin password through Cronicle's own storage CLI. To rotate it later, stop cronicle.service with sudo systemctl stop cronicle.service, run sudo /opt/cronicle/bin/control.sh admin admin '<new-password>', then start the service again with sudo systemctl start cronicle.service.
• Serve a real domain and TLS: The appliance serves the web UI over plain HTTP on port 80. For production, point a DNS name at the VM, obtain a trusted certificate (for example with certbot and Let's Encrypt), and front Cronicle with nginx TLS on port 443. Then set base_app_url in /opt/cronicle/conf/config.json to your https:// URL so that the links Cronicle generates are correct, and restart the service.
• Plugins: Cronicle ships Shell Script, HTTP Request and Test Plugin plugins. From the Admin tab, add your own custom plugins (any executable that speaks Cronicle's simple JSON-over-stdio protocol).
• Users and access control: From the Admin tab, add teammates and set per-privilege access (create, edit, delete and run events, abort jobs, and toggle the scheduler).
• Multi-server clusters: A single Cronicle server is a complete "Primary Group" master out of the box. To add worker servers, install Cronicle on additional VMs, point them at the same Storage backend, and add them under Admin, then Server Groups.
• Storage and backup: All Cronicle state lives under /var/lib/cronicle on the data disk. Back up that volume to protect your schedule, job history and users.
• Security patches: Unattended-upgrades remains enabled, so the OS continues to receive security updates automatically.

Support

SecureAnyCloud provides 24/7 expert support for this image. For help with your deployment, contact sales@secureanycloud.com.

Deploy on Azure

Launch Cronicle Job Scheduler on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on Azure with 24/7 support from SecureAnyCloud.

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Need Help?

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sales@secureanycloud.com