Azure ARM template, introduction

An introduction into ARM templates!

Anders Moth Falk

Before diving into the creation of ARM templates, I believe it would be beneficial to first review what ARM templates are and explore some of their use cases.

What are ARM Templates?

Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates are JSON files that define the infrastructure and configuration for your Azure resources.
They allow you to describe the resources you need—such as virtual machines, storage accounts, and networking components—in a declarative manner.
This means you specify what resources you want, and Azure takes care of creating and configuring them.

Role in Azure

ARM templates play a crucial role in managing Azure environments as Infrastructure as Code (IaC). They enable:
  • Automated Deployment: Deploy resources consistently and quickly without manual intervention.
  • Version Control: Track changes in your infrastructure over time by storing templates in a version control system.
  • Repeatable Processes: Easily replicate environments for development, testing, and production, ensuring consistency across stages.
By leveraging ARM templates, organizations can streamline their cloud management processes, reduce errors, and enhance collaboration among teams.

Where to use it?

Deployment Stack

  • Resource Group Management: ARM templates allow you to create and manage resource groups that contain related Azure resources. This ensures that resources are logically organized and can be managed together.
  • Multi-Resource Deployment: You can deploy multiple resources (like VMs, databases, and networking components) in a single operation, ensuring dependencies are handled automatically.
  • Environment Consistency: By using ARM templates to define your entire deployment stack, you can replicate environments (e.g., development, testing, production) with high fidelity.

Custom Deployment

  • Parameterized Templates: You can create custom deployments by using parameters in your ARM templates, allowing for different configurations without altering the underlying template structure. This is useful for setting values specific to each environment (like connection strings or VM sizes).
  • Nested and Linked Templates: ARM templates support nesting and linking, enabling you to build complex deployments that can be reused. For example, you can create a base template for common infrastructure and reference it in multiple other templates.
  • Custom Scripts and Extensions: You can integrate custom scripts or extensions within your ARM templates to perform post-deployment configurations, like installing software or configuring settings on virtual machines.

Infrastructure Management

  • Resource Scaling: ARM templates can define auto-scaling rules and configurations, allowing you to manage scaling of resources based on demand effectively.
  • Updating Infrastructure: You can use ARM templates to apply updates to existing resources, enabling a streamlined approach to managing changes in your infrastructure over time.

Integration with CI/CD Pipelines

  • Continuous Integration and Delivery: ARM templates can be integrated into CI/CD pipelines, automating the deployment process and ensuring that infrastructure changes are version-controlled and tested.

Compliance and Security

  • Enforcement By using ARM templates alongside Azure Policies, you can ensure that deployments comply with organizational standards and security requirements.

Disaster Recovery and Backup

  • Environment Replication: ARM templates can be used to quickly recreate environments in different regions for disaster recovery or to test new configurations.