Decoding Azure Infrastructure: Azure Bicep and ARM Templates

Azure Bicep vs ARM Templates

On the earth of Azure infrastructure as code (IaC), two main gamers are Azure Useful resource Supervisor (ARM) templates and Azure Bicep. Each are highly effective instruments for managing Azure sources, however they’ve important variations. This text will evaluate these two applied sciences and spotlight the benefits of Azure Bicep over ARM templates.

What are ARM Templates?

Azure Useful resource Supervisor (ARM) templates are JSON information that outline the sources wanted to deploy an utility in Azure. They supply a declarative approach to outline deployment configurations, permitting you to specify the sources to deploy and their properties.

{
  "$schema": "https://schema.administration.azure.com/schemas/2019-04-01/deploymentTemplate.json#",
  "contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",
  "parameters": {},
  "variables": {},
  "sources": [],
  "outputs": {}
}

What’s Azure Bicep?

Azure Bicep is a domain-specific language (DSL) for deploying Azure sources declaratively. It’s a clear abstraction over ARM and ARM templates, aiming to drastically simplify the authoring expertise with a cleaner syntax and higher assist for modularity and code reuse.

param storageAccountName string = 'mystorageaccount'

useful resource storageAccount 'Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts@2021-04-01' = {
  identify: storageAccountName
  location: resourceGroup().location
  sku: {
    identify: 'Standard_LRS'
  }
  sort: 'StorageV2'
}

Azure Bicep vs ARM Templates

• Syntax: Whereas ARM templates use JSON syntax, Azure Bicep makes use of a cleaner and extra intuitive syntax. This makes Bicep information simpler to learn and write.
• Modularity: Azure Bicep helps modularity, which lets you break down your infrastructure into smaller, reusable parts. This function promotes code reuse and makes managing your infrastructure extra manageable.
• Tooling: Azure Bicep is totally built-in with Visual Studio Code, offering options like autocompletion, code navigation, and reside linting. It additionally gives seamless integration with Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell.
• Transparency: Azure Bicep is a clear abstraction over ARM and ARM templates, which means something that may be carried out in an ARM Template might be carried out in Bicep.

Conclusion

Whereas ARM templates have been the usual for Azure IaC for a few years, Azure Bicep gives a number of benefits that make it a compelling different. Its simplified syntax, improved modularity, and higher tooling make it a superb selection for anybody trying to undertake IaC practices in Azure.

Within the subsequent article, we are going to dive deeper into Azure Bicep and discover ways to get began with it. Keep tuned!