Introduction

  • 2 minutes

JSON Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates provide a few features that can help you deploy software to different environments.

Suppose you're managing a software team that's developing an inventory system for your partner companies. Each environment you deploy software to, has different policies implemented through different Azure storage account SKUs. You have an ARM template that deploys a storage account that can be run on each environment. However, you'd like to make it easier to change inputs for each deployment environment. You decide to use variables and functions in the ARM template and parameter files for inputs.

In this module, you make your ARM template reusable for different environments by adding variables and expressions via Resource Manager functions. You also add better tracking and organization of your deployed resources by using tags. Then, you complete the goal of improving the flexibility of your deployments by using parameter files.

Note

Bicep is a language for defining your Azure resources. It has a simpler authoring experience than JSON, along with other features that help improve the quality of your infrastructure as code. We recommend that anyone new to infrastructure as code on Azure use Bicep instead of JSON. To learn about Bicep, see the Fundamentals of Bicep learning path.

Learning objectives

In this module, you'll:

  • Create an expression for a unique value by using JSON ARM template functions.
  • Reuse your expression by storing it in an ARM template variable.
  • Organize and track your deployed Azure resources by using resource tags.
  • Manage multiple deployment parameters by using ARM template parameter files.

Prerequisites