A quick one today, happy NYE everyone!

I’ve had a look at ARM templates today, seeing as I’ll be using these a lot soon!

What are ARM Templates?

ARM templates are also known as Azure Resource Manager templates, these allow us to deploy Infrastructure as a Code, meaning systems and complete environments can be spun up and down at a seconds notice depending on requirements, the benefits this brings not only in flexibility but cost savings cannot be ignored. The templates often have predefined settings which based upon the template makeup, can request feedback from the user deploying the template, this almost certainly would be the resource group name, machine name (if its a machine), perhaps a subnet range etc.

What did I need to setup?

Install PowerShell CLI, use az login to connect into my tenant (using global admin - in a production environment you would use a automation account or something that has only permissions to perform this function). Create a resource group, then run the az group deployment command to create the resources that are part of the template, the whole process took 5 minutes.

POSH

az login

az group create --name fisontech-dev-rg --location "UK South"

az deployment group create --resource-group fisontech-dev-rg --template-uri https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/azure-quickstart-templates/master/101-vm-simple-windows/azuredeploy.json
}

You can find more information at: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/templates/overview