June 14, 2022

Infrastructure as Code for Azure

Eric Popivker

What is IaC?

Infrastructure as code is a process of provisioning hardware using scripts.

In the past provisioning and setting up new hardware was a long and tedious process. With clouds (not the fluffy ones) creating a new server or database is just a couple of clicks away. IaC is just a way to script those clicks to make it easy to re-create environments as needed.

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IaC for Azure

There are several good options for IaC in Azure:

  • arm templates — native azure option
  • terraform — popular OSS and cloud
  • ansible- another popular platform supported by RedHat.
  • pulumi — new kid on the block

Each one of these can be used to provision and deploy resources in Azure. They mostly have similar features like:

  • preview changes
  • rollback changes
  • clean up
  • some form of script/code re-use
  • easy to integrate into CD pipelines
  • scripts/code can be versioned in source control

But there are some major differences also. Let’s go through them in some detail.

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ARM Templates

There are two versions of arm templates.

classic way is Json

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"resources": [ { "type": "Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts", "apiVersion": "2019-04-01", "name": "mystorageaccount", "location": "westus", "sku": { "name": "Standard_LRS" }, "kind": "StorageV2", "properties": {} } ]

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a newer approach is to use Bicep, which is a wrapper around ARM templates It looks a bit more like a real programming language:

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param location string = resourceGroup().location param storageAccountName string = 'toylaunch${uniqueString(resourceGroup().id)}' resource storageAccount 'Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts@2021-06-01' = { name: storageAccountName location: location sku: { name: 'Standard_LRS' } kind: 'StorageV2' properties: { accessTier: 'Hot' } }

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Good:

  • keeping things in one stack/env (Microsoft) can be better than integrating with yet another 3rd party
  • up to date

Bad:

  • learn yet another language. If only Microsoft had one or two other languages that they could re-use for this? Hmmm…..

Terraform

Has been around since 2014. Uses HashiCorp Config Language.

Looks like this:

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resource "azurerm_storage_account" "mystorageaccount" { name = "diag${random_id.randomId.hex}" resource_group_name = azurerm_rg.my1stTFRG.name location = "eastus" account_tier = "Standard" account_replication_type = "LRS" tags = { environment = "Terraform Demo" } }

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Good:

  • oldish and well-known tool
  • supports Python and TypeScript through SDK

Bad:

  • learn yet another language
  • have to manage State manually. Most others provide SaaS offerings.

Ansible

Another old-timer from 2012.

Written in Python, so very friendly to Python developers.

Uses Yaml for declaring Infrastructure resources.

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- name: Create storage account azure_rm_storageaccount: resource_group: Testing name: testaccount001 account_type: Standard_LRS

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Good:

  • Open Source (owned by Red Hat)
  • Has a big community — 54K stars.

Bad:

  • learn yet another language

Pulumi

https://www.pulumi.com/docs/intro/vs/

You probably noticed a common “bad” trend of the tools above: you have to learn a new language. But don’t fear… There is a new kid on the block: Pulumi.

Pulumi supports multiple programming languages: TypeScript, Python, C# and a bunch of others. With Pulumi, Microsoft developers can continue working in Visual Studio and using C#, but now they can use it to create infrastructure in the cloud.

Here is an example:

using Pulumi; using Azure = Pulumi.Azure; class MyStack : Stack { public MyStack() { var exampleResourceGroup = new Azure.Core.ResourceGroup("exampleResourceGroup", new Azure.Core.ResourceGroupArgs { Location = "West Europe", }); var exampleAccount = new Azure.Storage.Account("exampleAccount", new Azure.Storage.AccountArgs { ResourceGroupName = exampleResourceGroup.Name, Location = exampleResourceGroup.Location, AccountTier = "Standard", AccountReplicationType = "GRS", Tags = { { "environment", "staging" }, }, } ); } }

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Good:

  • Can use C# !!!
  • Up to date with Azure Native API
  • Documentation is really good with code examples for pretty much every resource

Bad:

  • New and a bit unproven

Conclusion

We have looked at various options for implementing IaC in the Azure environment. And the winner is … Pulumi!

It has support for C# and excellent documentation, which allows for a small learning curve. It is not as established as some other older Tools, but it has a very promising future.

Here is an accompanying Demo video with a sample code


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Infrastructure as Code for Azure

Infrastructure as code is a process of provisioning hardware using scripts.In the past provisioning and setting up new hardware was a long and tedious process. With clouds (not the fluffy ones) creating a new server or database is just a couple of clicks away. IaC is just a way to script those clicks to make it easy to re-create environments as needed.‍

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