how do you detect drift in Azure infrastructure using ARM templates

Question

I am looking for ways to detect and fix drifts in my Azure infrastructure and ARM templates, are there any tools that can help us compare the current state of our resources vs the desired state defined in the ARM (Azure Resource Manager) templates?

for example: The Terraform plan lists the changes in the actual state vs the desired state

Answer 1

Hi Rawal,

Thanks for your question in Microsoft QnA!

Unfortunately with ARM template there is no great tooling that will help! I will wait for someone else to post great tool.

Here is my recommendationa:

• Don't allow Manual changes, Put everything through GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps pipelines. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/devops/deliver/what-is-continuous-delivery
• For Initial deployment (since you already have infra) use What-if to determine what's changing.https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/templates/deploy-what-if?tabs=azure-powershell

Use Deployment Stack for controled deployments : Use Deployment Stack : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/bicep/deployment-stacks?tabs=azure-powershell

Please click "Accept as Answer" if this helps