If you’ve ever built Azure resources manually in the portal, you know it can be time-consuming and prone to human error. That’s where ARM templates (Azure Resource Manager templates) come in—they allow you to define your infrastructure as code, making deployments consistent, repeatable, and automated.
In this post, we’ll walk through creating an ARM template for an Azure Web App and deploying it using the Azure CLI. By the end, you’ll have a working web app and a solid understanding of how ARM templates streamline cloud automation.
What Are ARM Templates?
ARM (Azure Resource Manager) templates are JSON-based files that define Azure resources. Instead of manually configuring services in the portal, you describe the desired state once in a template, then deploy it as many times as you want.
Benefits of ARM templates:
- Automation: Deploy with a single command.
- Consistency: Same configuration every time, across dev, test, and production.
- Flexibility: Use parameters for reusability and different environments.
- Tooling Support: Work with them in the portal, PowerShell, Azure CLI, or even CI/CD pipelines.
Setting Up the Environment
Before writing templates, we’ll set up a few tools:
- Visual Studio Code – A lightweight editor perfect for working with templates.
- Azure Resource Manager Tools extension – Adds schema integration, snippets, and IntelliSense for ARM templates.
- Azure CLI – The command-line tool we’ll use to execute our templates.
To check if you have the Azure CLI installed, run: