Building Production-Ready Pipelines in Azure DevOps: Beyond the Documentation Examples
Hi everyone, When moving from basic Azure DevOps tutorials to enterprise production environments, we all quickly realize that documentation examples don't always cover real-world complexities. Handling multi-stage dependencies, keeping Terraform state secure, and managing secrets across environments requires a highly strategic approach. To help DevOps engineers bridge this gap, I recently put together a deep-dive architecture breakdown detailing how to build a resilient, multi-stage YAML pipeline from scratch. Here is a quick look at the core enterprise architecture I focus on: - Multi-Stage Lifecycle: Safe progression flows through Build, Dev, QA, UAT, and Production stages. - Infrastructure Automation: Clean integration with Terraform, including state and secrets management using Azure Key Vault. - Security Gates: Implementation of SAST scanning, Workload Identity, and automated approval policies. - Team Alignment: Connecting Azure DevOps with project tools like Asana to streamline cross-platform tracking. I wanted to share this pattern here to get some community feedback on the YAML structure. Before I post the full configuration snippets, I would love to hear how your teams handle environment gates and approvals. What are the biggest bottlenecks you run into with multi-stage YAML pipelines? Let's discuss in the comments below! Best regards, Abdullah ShahidAzureFunBytes Reminder - Intro to @BicepLang with @adotfrank - 7/8/2021
AzureFunBytes is a weekly opportunity to learn more about the fundamentals and foundations that make up Azure. It's a chance for me to understand more about what people across the Azure organization do and how they do it. Every week we get together at 11 AM Pacific on Microsoft LearnTV and learn more about Azure. When: July 8, 2021 11 AM Pacific / 2 PM Eastern Where: Microsoft LearnTV This week on AzureFunBytes we flex some Azure muscle with Bicep. Bicep is a language that allows you to use declarative syntax to codify your Azure infrastructure deployments. Bicep is an Azure native Domain-Specific Language (DSL) that promotes a cleaner syntax, improved type safety, and better support for modularity and re-use of code. Bicep is a transparent abstraction over Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates that gives you the ability to create nearly any required resource with in Azure. Bicep has a playground that allows you to start using existing ARM Template Quickstarts right away. Or if you choose to build them from scratch, the snippets with the VS Code Bicep extension will be a huge help. I was lucky enough to get one of the experts on Bicep to join us this week! We'll welcome Microsoft Program Manager Alex Frankel to the show to give us greater insight into how to use Bicep to create our infrastructure. I'll ask Alex your questions, we'll look at some Bicep basics, discuss best practices, and even kick off some deployments. Don't miss this incredible opportunity to learn about building your Infrastructure as Code (IAC) with Bicep! Our Agenda: Why we are investing in bicep in the first place ARM Templates are by far the most popular declarative tool for deploying to Azure, want to improve experience for those customers Clarify that Bicep is just one of many great options Key differences between Bicep and ARM templates Modules, richer intellisense, auto DependsOn, richer type safety How the language is designed and the importance of tooling In terms of language design (not complexity), Bicep shares more DNA with C# and TypeScript than traditional “scripting” languages like HCL or Chef Tooling is built alongside the language, so our syntax decisions are always driven by our ability to build tooling to go with it Benefits of being “Azure native” Day zero support for all resource types No state management without losing the ability to perform what-if (“tf plan” equivalent) and manage lifecycle (“tf destroy” equivalent) Works with other platform capabilities like Template Specs, Azure Marketplace, etc. Full details of how the Bicep language works can be found in the [Bicep documentation] and there is a rich library of examples to help you get a jumpstart. From the Bicep GitHub repository docs, how to get started: To get going with Bicep: Start by installing the tooling. Complete the Bicep tutorial Alternatively, you can try the Bicep Playground or use the VS Code Devcontainer/Codespaces repo to get a preconfigured environment. If you have an existing ARM Template or set of resources that you would like to convert to .bicep format, see Decompiling an ARM Template. Full details of how the bicep language works can be found in the Bicep documentation and there is a rich library of examples to help you get a jumpstart. How does Bicep work? First, author your Bicep code using the Bicep language service as part of the Bicep VS Code extension Both Az CLI (2.20.0+) and the PowerShell Az module (v5.6.0+) have Bicep support built-in. This means you can use the standard deployment commands with your *.bicep files and the tooling will transpile the code and send it to ARM on your behalf. For example, to deploy main.bicep to a resource group my-rg , we can use the CLI command we are already used to: az deployment group create -f ./main.bicep -g my-rg For more detail on taking advantage of new Bicep constructs that replace an equivalent from ARM Templates, you can read the moving from ARM => Bicep doc. Here's an example of a Bicep template to create a two subnet Azure VNET: resource virtualNetwork 'Microsoft.Network/virtualNetworks@2019-11-01' = { name: 'name' location: resourceGroup().location properties: { addressSpace: { addressPrefixes: [ '10.0.0.0/16' ] } subnets: [ { name: 'Subnet-1' properties: { addressPrefix: '10.0.0.0/24' } } { name: 'Subnet-2' properties: { addressPrefix: '10.0.1.0/24' } } ] } } You can add parameters, use modules, link templates, set variables, and set outputs within your template. You can deploy your Bicep templates using Azure CLI, PowerShell, and even the Azure Portal. The Bicep 0.4 community call from June 2, 2021: Learn about Azure fundamentals with me! Live stream is normally found on Twitch, YouTube, and LearnTV at 11 AM PT / 2 PM ET Thursday. You can also find the recordings here as well: AzureFunBytes on Twitch AzureFunBytes on YouTube Azure DevOps YouTube Channel Follow AzureFunBytes on Twitter Useful Docs: Get $200 in free Azure Credit Microsoft Learn: Introduction to Azure fundamentals Microsoft Learn: Deploy and manage resources in Azure by using Bicep Bicep Documentation Quickstart: Create Bicep files with Visual Studio Code Bicep Playground ARM template documentation Tutorial: Create and deploy first Azure Resource Manager Bicep file Bicep on Twitter Install the Azure CLI Best practices for Bicep What is Infrastructure as Code? About Domain-Specific LanguagesUsing Azure serverless Functions and Infrastructure as Code to automate service creation
This session will cover our project “Azure Cloud Lab Environment”. This is an Azure Serverless solution to create and destroy Azure services based on a calendar event. We will use it to create a tailor-made Azure environment for each student subscription to use. We will briefly introduce the Azure services involved in this project, the technique behind the scenes and how to use Infrastructure as Code (CDK-TF) to create other Infrastructure as Code solutions at scale.Azure Virtual Machines Automation - Deployment
Welcome to this series where you will learn the various best practices for deploying Azure Virtual Machines and how to manage them at scale. To get started, we are going to take a look at various deployment options; how you scale this out from your initial deployment and finally to a complete self-service solution for your enterprise IT customers.Learn ARM templates (4 tutorials), from the beginning
Infrastructure as Code Infrastructure as Code, IaC is the process of expressing your infrastructure as Code as readable text files over using UIs to configure the same. The benefits of doing so are many. Below are some benefits: Dev and Ops can work in the same process. There's a need for Developers and Ops to work more tightly to innovate faster with speed and accuracy. Developers normally store their code in a version control system like Git. You can now do the same with your templates, text files desribing your Cloud resources. Anyone can deploy. When your templates are in version control, anyone on the team can deploy, just use a tool like Azure-CLI or PowerShell to do so. When everyone in a team can deploy it's important that it can be done reliably. You know what's in the Cloud. Before IaC you were/are using a graphical interface or some tool to manage your resources. It's easy to loose track of what you have in the Cloud. If you instead express your resources as text files it's a lot easier to see what's going on. Easier to reproduce elsewhere. In theory at least, it should be a lot easier to recreate your Cloud operation elsewhere if you are looking to expand your company's business elsewhere.
