Azure brings an overwhelming number of services, this helps the project to be built with less friction and more pace. One of the major challenges which I have experienced on my current project at work is, provisioning new environments for project workload. I agree, with Azure Portal/CLI/PS life is easy, but the challenge comes when you have a big chunk of services to be built in each new environment.
Azure has a great solution to this problem, using the Resource Group template we get a single pane of glass which can be used to deploy all workload in a single execution. Apart from not only providing the template files, which has JSON configuration to build all workloads in a resource group. Azure Portal also provides commands and code which can be used off the shelf to build the workloads currently Azure Portal provides Azure CLI, Powershell, C# and Ruby code which can be used to execute the template.
In below quick steps I will explain how you can rebuild all the workloads provisioned in a resource group to a new resource group location.
Login to Azure portal, add a new resource group (“Deploy” is RG for this demo) and add a couple of workloads. In this sample, I have added App Service Plan, App Service, and Storage account
We need to download the ARM template for the resource group. Azure provides a hassle-free option to download ARM template for the entire resource group or each resource in the resource group. In our scenario, we will download the ARM replate for the resource group. So navigate to Export template option in the menu blad for the resource group “Deploy”. On load couple of menu options appears as below. Template and Parameters menu option provides ARM template and parameter file for all the resources in the resource group.
Next few options are fully cooked code for Azure CLI, Powershell, .NET and Ruby which can be used off the shelf to deploy resources in ARM template
Using the Download option on the same screen you can download all the files in a zip format
On extraction of the zip file, you will find a number of files.
Template file
Parameters file
PS deploy file
CLI deploy file
Ruby deploy file
C# Deployment Helper file
I am using VS code to work with the downloaded file, but you can use any editor of your choice. Open the downloaded folder, and select template, parameter and deploy.ps1 file. We are using deploy.ps1 as we will be deploying resources using powershell. But you can use any of the options listed in point 5
Add a new resource group where you want to deploy the resources using ARM template. I have created one by the name “ReADeploy”
Select deploy.ps1 and using the powerful VS code executed PowerShell, which is as simple as pressing F5. You will be asked for a subscription, resource group and deployment name details to connect and deploy resources to the desired resource group
Next, you will be asked to log in using MS login popup, the best feature about the deploy.ps1 file is it works like a wizard. So you don’t need to be full on the developer to deploy resources.
So during the deployment, I encountered below error. This is really great, as we get to know that not everything will happen automagically :). So default downloaded parameter file has all the values as null.
Azure provides a generic template which can be parameterized as per requirement and deployed, which bring in some great flexibility. We will update the parameter file, in my case since I have App Service Plan, App Service, and Storage. The file needs names for each.
Note: In addition to this you might experience different errors based on services you have provisioned in the parent resource group. Some of the common errors are if you have a storage account in primary and want to deploy the same in secondary resource group you will get an error for the name as storage name should be unique through Azure. So you need to fix error one by one.
Start re-deployment with the fixed ARM template.
Once all the errors are fixed your deployment to a new resource group will be successful
Navigate to “ReADeploy” resource group, created in Step 7. You will find all the services created as available in “Deploy” resource group, the name will be as you mentioned in the parameter file.
As you can see in quick steps as above with minimal changes to downloaded ARM template, we can re-create an entire resource group which might have few resources as in this sample or may have 100’s of resources.
Happy coding 🙂
ARM + Powershell – Deploy Azure Workload Azure brings an overwhelming number of services, this helps the project to be built with less friction and more pace.
