Book Image

Azure Resource Manager Templates Quick Start Guide

By : Ritesh Modi
Book Image

Azure Resource Manager Templates Quick Start Guide

By: Ritesh Modi

Overview of this book

Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates are declarations of Azure resources in the JSON format to provision and maintain them using infrastructure as code. This book gives practical solutions and examples for provisioning and managing various Azure services using ARM templates. The book starts with an understanding of infrastructure as code, a refresher on JSON, and then moves on to explain the fundamental concepts of ARM templates. Important concepts like iteration, conditional evaluation, security, usage of expressions, and functions will be covered in detail. You will use linked and nested templates to create modular ARM templates. You will see how to create multiple instances of the same resources, how to nest and link templates, and how to establish dependencies between them. You will also learn about implementing design patterns, secure template design, the unit testing of ARM templates, and adopting best practices. By the end of this book, you will understand the entire life cycle of ARM templates and their testing, and be able to author them for complex deployments.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: ARM Template Foundational Skills
6
Section 2: ARM Template Advanced Concepts

ARM Template Best Practices

This is the last chapter of the book, and we have been writing Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates throughout this book. You've probably noticed that there are multiple ways to write resources, parameters, and variables in an ARM template. Writing an ARM template that provisions an environment is easy; however, writing an ARM template that is also maintainable, readable, and easy to change is not. In the last chapter, we took a look at the topic of design patterns and how they help with creating maintainable ARM templates. Apart from design patterns, we should also follow certain best practices while authoring ARM templates. These best practices will ensure that ARM templates can be maintained, reused, and evolve easily over a period of time.

Some of the important best practices that should be implemented in every ARM template include the following...