1. To get a reproducible environment quickly up and running.
2. Besides the answer to the previous question, a standardized working environment makes team-based application-development possible.
3. Scripting is very flexible and it's somewhat easier to make it exactly the way you want it. But you have to create everything yourself. In automation, the hard work is already done and it's often a little bit more platform agnostic.
4. The Azure Resource Manager is the most important one. For initial configuration, the Cloud-Init and the Custom Script Extension are available.
5. Vagrant deploys a workload in Azure; Packer creates a custom image that you can deploy.
6. For multiple reasons; the most important ones are as follows:
   • Security
   • To much customization needed on a standard image
   • Not dependent on the offerings of a third party
   • Capture an existing...