Template deployment methods in Azure - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Template deployment methods

📖 Scenario: You are working in a cloud team that manages resources on Microsoft Azure. Your team uses ARM templates to deploy infrastructure consistently. You want to practice deploying a simple storage account using different template deployment methods.

🎯 Goal: Build an ARM template deployment step-by-step. You will create the initial template data, add configuration parameters, apply the deployment logic, and finalize the deployment with outputs.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a basic ARM template JSON structure

Add parameters for resource naming

Define a storage account resource using the parameters

Add outputs to show the storage account name

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

ARM templates are used to deploy Azure resources consistently and repeatedly with infrastructure as code.

💼 Career

Understanding ARM template structure and deployment methods is essential for Azure cloud engineers and DevOps professionals.

1

Create the initial ARM template structure

Create a variable called template and assign it a dictionary with keys $schema set to "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2019-04-01/deploymentTemplate.json#", contentVersion set to "1.0.0.0", and an empty list for resources.

Azure

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Start by creating a dictionary with the required ARM template keys and empty resources list.

2

Add parameters for the storage account name

Add a parameters key to the template dictionary. It should be a dictionary with a key storageAccountName that has a nested dictionary with type set to "string" and metadata containing description set to "Name of the storage account".

Azure

template = {
    "$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2019-04-01/deploymentTemplate.json#",
    "contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",
    "resources": []
}
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Add a parameters section with storageAccountName as a string and a description.

3

Add the storage account resource using the parameter

Add a dictionary to the resources list in template. This dictionary should have type set to "Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts", apiVersion set to "2022-09-01", name set to [parameters('storageAccountName')], location set to [resourceGroup().location], and kind set to "StorageV2". Also include a sku dictionary with name set to "Standard_LRS".

Azure

template = {
    "$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2019-04-01/deploymentTemplate.json#",
    "contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",
    "parameters": {
        "storageAccountName": {
            "type": "string",
            "metadata": {
                "description": "Name of the storage account"
            }
        }
    },
    "resources": []
}
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Add a storage account resource dictionary inside the resources list using the parameter for the name.

4

Add outputs to show the storage account name

Add an outputs key to the template dictionary. It should be a dictionary with a key storageAccountNameOutput that has a nested dictionary with type set to "string" and value set to [parameters('storageAccountName')].

Azure

template = {
    "$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2019-04-01/deploymentTemplate.json#",
    "contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",
    "parameters": {
        "storageAccountName": {
            "type": "string",
            "metadata": {
                "description": "Name of the storage account"
            }
        }
    },
    "resources": [
        {
            "type": "Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts",
            "apiVersion": "2022-09-01",
            "name": "[parameters('storageAccountName')]",
            "location": "[resourceGroup().location]",
            "kind": "StorageV2",
            "sku": {
                "name": "Standard_LRS"
            }
        }
    ]
}
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Add an outputs section to return the storage account name parameter value.