What is Azure?
Microsoft Azure, commonly referred to as Azure, is a cloud computing service created by Microsoft for building, testing, deploying, and managing applications and services through Microsoft-managed data centers.
What is Azure Resource Manager (ARM)?
ARM is a deployment and management service for Azure, providing a management layer enabling the creation, updating, and deletion of resources in Azure. You use management features, such as access control, locks, and tags, to secure and organise resources post-deployment.
Need for rapid and reliable infrastructure
With the move to the cloud, many teams have adopted agile development methods which by design require iterations to be turned around at speed. This results in rapid repeated deployments to the cloud and the requirement for a reliable infrastructure to cope with these requirements.
Unifying the process
As infrastructure has become part of this iterative process, the division between operations and development has disappeared. To unify the process teams need to manage infrastructure and application through code.
Automating deployments
By using the practice of infrastructure as code you can automate these deployments to define the infrastructure that needs to be deployed. The infrastructure code becomes part of your project. Any member of the team can run the code and deploy similar environments. As with application code, the infrastructure code is stored and versioned in a source repository.
What are ARM templates?
For Azure solutions, Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates are used to implement infrastructure as code. The template is a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) file that defines the infrastructure and configuration. Using declarative syntax, the template lets you state what you intend to deploy without having to write the sequence of programming commands to create it. In the template, you specify the resources and properties for those resources to deploy.
Top 5 advantages of ARM Templates
1. Declarative syntax: ARM templates allow you to create and deploy an entire Azure infrastructure declaratively.
2. Repeatable results: Repeatedly deploy your infrastructure throughout the development lifecycle and have confidence your resources are deployed consistently.
3. Orchestration: You don’t have to worry about the complexities of ordering operations. Resource Manager orchestrates the deployment of interdependent resources so they’re created in the correct order.
4. Modular files: You can nest one template inside of another template or break templates into smaller, reusable components and link them together at deployment time.
5. CI/CD integration: You can automate your release pipelines for fast and reliable application and infrastructure updates by integrating templates into your continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) tools.
Top 2 challenges of ARM Templates
1. Difficulty: Creating ARM templates isn’t easy, they have a high learning curve.
2. Complexity: They quickly become large and complex, especially with the deployment of many Azure Resources.
Why is Amdaris the right partner for DevOps?
Amdaris have a wealth of experience using DevOps in a wide variety of situations. Thanks to years of experience, we are very aware of how important this process is to ensure the success of a software development project.
As a technology-agnostic software design agency, we can offer independent advice for using any language or web framework. Our processes are completely transparent and we have a proven methodology that ensures the success of our projects not only for our clients but also for their clients.
We are a 10-year Microsoft Gold-Certified Partner and have an internationally recognised certification ISO 27001. As such, you can rest assured of the security of your data.
What next?
If you would like to speak to someone at Amdaris about IaC, just get in touch.
Call +44(0)117 935 3444 or contact us using the form below and let us know about your next plans. We will help you choose the best technology for making your project a success.