Slides presented at RoboGen Automation by CloudGen Verona, about the current state of the art of the ARM Templates and project Bicep.

1. 1
TOPIC
IaC on Azure
Show your Bicep!
Marco Obinu

2. Who I am
@OmegaMadLab
https://github.com/OmegaMadLab
Marco Obinu
@OmegaMadLab
marco.obinu@omegamadlab.com
http://www.omegamadlab.com
https://github.com/OmegaMadLab
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marco-obinu-omegamadlab/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpkBeQSscC1iBvpNP4VNTKQ
• Advisory Engineer @ SoftJam S.p.A.
• Azure MVP
• Geek to the bone 

3. ARM Templates
State of the art

4. Why ARM templates?
• Native IaC solution for Azure deployments
• Create environments in a declarative and idempotent way
• Track the changes
• Integrate your infrastructure deployments in CI/CD pipelines
• Complete coverage of all features
• Highly integrated with the Azure platform
• Export to ARM template
• Azure Blueprints, WVD deployments, CI/CD for Azure Data Factory
ARM

5. ARM template: state of the art
• VS Code extensions for development
• Deploy to different scopes
• Removal of the deployment limits
• What-If (preview)
• Deployment Scripts (preview)
• Azure Resource Manager Template Toolkit
• Template Specs

6. Demo
https://github.com/OmegaMadLab/StartingWithArmTemplates

7. Bicep
A new Domain Specific Language

8. Project Bicep
• A new Domain Specific Language for ARM deployments
• Current version 0,1  not ready for Production
• Less verbose than JSON
• Doesn’t intend to replace JSON
BICEP
ARM

9. Project Bicep - Tools
• Bicep CLI (required) - Compiles bicep files into ARM
templates. Cross-platform.
• Bicep VS Code Extension - Authoring support,
intellisense, validation. Optional, but recommended.
https://github.com/Azure/bicep/blob/main/docs/installing.
md#setup-your-bicep-development-environment

10. Project Bicep - Syntax
Parameters – JSON ARM
"parameters": {
"administratorLogin": {
"type": "string",
"defaultValue": "strongLogin"
}
}
"administratorLogin": "[parameters('administratorLogin')]"
Parameters - BICEP
param administratorLogin string = 'strongLogin’
administratorLogin: administratorLogin

11. Project Bicep - Syntax
Parameters – JSON ARM
"parameters": {
"administratorLoginPassword": {
"type": "secureString"
}
}
Parameters - BICEP
param administratorLoginPassword string {
secure: true
}

12. Project Bicep - Syntax
Parameters – JSON ARM
"parameters": {
"storageSKU": {
"type": "string",
"allowedValues": [
"Standard_LRS",
"Premium_LRS"
],
"defaultValue": "Standard_LRS",
"metadata": {
"description": "The tier of the storage account."
}
}
}
Parameters - BICEP
param storageSKU string {
allowed: [
'Standard_LRS'
'Premium_LRS'
]
default: 'Standard_LRS'
metadata: {
description: 'The tier of the storage account'
}
}

13. Project Bicep - Syntax
Variables – JSON ARM
"variables": {
"collation": "SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS",
"location": "[ResourceGroup().Id]",
"sqlName": "[concat(‘sqlsrv’, parameters(‘suffix’)]"
}
"SqlServerName": "[variables('sqlName')]"
Variables – BICEP
var collation = 'SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS'
var location = resourceGroup().id
var sqlName = 'sqlsrv${suffix}’
SqlServerName: sqlName

14. Project Bicep - Syntax
Resource – BICEP
resource stg 'Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts@2019-06-01' = {
name: 'uniquestorage001'
location: 'eastus'
kind: 'Storage'
sku: {
name: 'Standard_LRS'
}
}
"SqlUri": "[reference(resourceId('Microsoft.Sql/servers/', variables('sqlserverName'))).fullyQualifiedDomainName]"
SqlUri: sqlSrv.properties.fullyQualifiedDomainName
keyword Symbolic name Type & API version
Properties
ARM Template Reference
JSON
BICEP

15. Project Bicep - Syntax
Output – JSON ARM
"outputs": {
"SqlParameters": {
"type": "string",
"value": {
"SqlServerName": "[variables('sqlserverName')]"
}
}
}
Output – BICEP
output sqlServerName string = sqlServername

16. Demo

17. Project Bicep – resources
• Official repo
• https://github.com/Azure/bicep/
• Bicep Playground
• https://bicepdemo.z22.web.core.windows.net/

18. Project Bicep - Limitations
• Current limitations:
• No support for the copy or condition property
• No explicit support for deployments across scopes
• Bicep assumes you are deploying to a resource group, though
the generated template can be deployed to any scope
• Single line object and arrays (i.e. ['a', 'b', 'c']) are not yet
supported
• You still need to deploy the compiled template yourself
• No IntelliSense whatsoever
• Minimal resource schema validation
• Bicep is currently not covered by Azure support plans as it is
still in early development stages

19. Project Bicep - Roadmap
• Roadmap
• Version 0,2  31/10
• Version 0,3  end of 2020 – aim to JSON ARM feature parity
• Future addition
• ARM Template converter
• Extensibility to cover end-to-end deployment scenarios

20. Let’s keep
in touch!
@OmegaMadLab
marco.obinu@omegamadlab.com
http://www.omegamadlab.com
https://github.com/OmegaMadLab
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marco-obinu-omegamadlab/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpkBeQSscC1iBvpNP4VNTKQ