As a Microsoft Technical Architect, I have been spending a lot of time educating and providing demos of various technologies, tools, and business workflow solutions to partners and customers. One area that I have been focused on is extensibility capabilities of Microsoft Office 365 through Microsoft Graph, Office Development, and Microsoft Teams.

In the various scenarios, it’s not uncommon to need infrastructure or web services to provide endpoints for working with data or accessing resources from other platforms. I have maintaining bullet lists of steps needed to create my testing and demo resources, which get created and torn down frequently.

While the bullet lists have been great in helping to manage and deploy consistent Azure resources for my various scenarios, manually going through the steps needed to create the resources through the Azure portal takes time. That time would be better spent sharing experiences and working with the teams. In some scenarios, we have the partners and customer walk through the steps with us to learn through action. In these pre-scripted sessions its critical that the backend is consistently deployed allowing us to focus on the goals and objectives of the session.

I have known about Azure Resources Manager templates for a while, but just never took the time to dive deeper. Recently I had an opportunity to work with a team specifically on Azure Resource Manager templates. Let’s just say the only time I will use the Admin GUI from now on will be the first time I am exploring an Azure resource and I want to get a visual of all the options and settings needed. Once I understand more about the Azure resource I now create Azure Resource Manager templates to use in all further builds of the specific Azure resource.

What is really great about Azure Resource Manager templates is you can deploy, manage, and monitor all the resources for your solution as a group, rather than handling these resources individually. You can repeatedly deploy your solution throughout the development lifecycle and have confidence your resources are deployed in a consistent state.

• Define and deploy your infrastructure through the declarative syntax in Resource Manager templates, rather than through imperative commands.
• Define all deployment and configuration steps in the template. You should have no manual steps for setting up your solution.
• Run imperative commands to manage your resources, such as to start or stop an app or machine.
• Arrange resources with the same lifecycle in a resource group. Use tags for all other organizing of resources.
• Spend some time working in the Azure Resource Explorer, it will help you learn the syntax and options available across your tenant.
  • https://resources.azure.com
• Azure enterprise prescriptive subscription governance
  • https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/resource-manager-subscription-governance

So as you look through the list of resources I have collected there is a lot to learn and review. I would suggest starting with the following resources. Enjoy, and feel free to reach out if you have any questions. You can get me on Twitter, @RobertJGates

• Azure Resource Manager overview
• Understand the structure and syntax of Azure Resource Manager templates
• Use Visual Studio Code extension to create Azure Resource Manager template
• Create your first Azure Resource Manager template

Azure ARM Templates

** Please note this list will be maintained and updated at  https://github.com/robertjgates/AzureArmTemplates

Recommended tools

Install Windows Subsystem for Linux on Windows 10

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10

Install the Azure CLI V2 for Windows or Linux

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/install-azure-cli

Install PowerShell Cmdlets for Azure

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/azure/install-azurerm-ps?view=azurermps-5.4.0

Install Visual Studio Code and ARM Template plugins

• https://code.visualstudio.com/download

Visual Studio Code Plugin – ARM Tools

• https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=msazurermtools.azurerm-vscode-tools

Visual Studio Code Plugin – ARM Snippets

• https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=samcogan.arm-snippets

Install Azure Storage Explorer – Helpful when you need files accessible from a secure location.

• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/features/storage-explorer

Azure Resource Explorer

• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-resource-explorer-a-new-tool-to-discover-the-azure-api/

Resources

Azure Resource Manager Overview

Azure Resource Manager overview

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/resource-group-overview

Understand the structure and syntax of Azure Resource Manager templates

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/resource-group-authoring-templates

Use Visual Studio Code extension to create Azure Resource Manager template

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/resource-manager-vscode-extension

Create your first Azure Resource Manager template

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/resource-manager-create-first-template

Export an Azure Resource Manager template from existing resources

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/resource-manager-export-template

Variables section of Azure Resource Manager templates

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/resource-manager-templates-variables

Outputs section in Azure Resource Manager templates

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/resource-manager-templates-outputs

Resource functions for Azure Resource Manager templates

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/resource-group-template-functions-resource

Azure Resource Manager template parameter section

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/resource-manager-templates-parameters

Using linked and nested templates when deploying Azure resources

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/resource-group-linked-templates

Azure Resource Manager Custom Script Extension with Linux Virtual Machines

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/linux/extensions-customscript

Azure Resource Manager Custom Script Extension with Windows Virtual Machines

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/extensions-customscript

Deploying Azure Resouce Manager Templates with Artifacts located in a Private GitHub Repository

• https://blog.tyang.org/2017/05/19/deploying-arm-templates-with-artifacts-located-in-a-private-github-repository/

Azure Resoure Manager Deployment Methods

Deploy resources with Resource Manager templates and Azure portal

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/resource-group-template-deploy-portal

Deploy resources with Resource Manager templates and Azure PowerShell

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/resource-group-template-deploy

Creating and deploying Azure resource groups through Visual Studio

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/vs-azure-tools-resource-groups-deployment-projects-create-deploy

Azure Resource Manager Sample Templates

Azure Quickstart Templates

• https://azure.microsoft.com/documentation/templates

Azure Policy Templates

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-policy/json-samples

How to create a Linux virtual machine with Azure Resource Manager templates

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/linux/create-ssh-secured-vm-from-template

How to create a Windows virtual machine from Azure Resource Manager templates

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/ps-template

Azure Resource Manager templates for Web Apps

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service/app-service-rm-template-samples

Use Visual Studio Code extension to create Azure Resource Manager template

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/resource-manager-vscode-extension

Define the order for deploying resources in Azure Resource Manager templates

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/resource-group-define-dependencies

Azure Training and Videos

Mastering Microsoft Azure Resource Manager

• https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/microsoft-azure-resource-manager-mastering

Microsoft Azure: Design and Deploy ARM Templates

• https://www.lynda.com/Azure-tutorials/Microsoft-Azure-Design-Deploy-ARM-Templates/572164-2.html

Azure Resource Manager Overview

• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/videos/azure-resource-manager-overview/

Azure Resource Manager Templates Building Infrastructure in Azure

• https://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Building-Infrastructure-in-Azure-using-Azure-Resource-Manager/Azure-Resource-Manager-Templates

Master VMs in Microsoft Azure Resource Manager

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqORWgGgUrw

Tips and tricks with Azure Resource Manager

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2FcmGtAcqE

Azure Resource Manager DevOps: Overview

• https://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Azure-Resource-Manager-DevOps/01

Azure Resource Manager DevOps: Tooling

• https://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Azure-Resource-Manager-DevOps/02

Azure Resource Manager DevOps: Customizing Templates

• https://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Azure-Resource-Manager-DevOps/03

Azure Resource Manager DevOps: Role-Based Access Control

• https://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Azure-Resource-Manager-DevOps/04

Azure Resource Manager DevOps: ARM and ALM Integration

• https://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Azure-Resource-Manager-DevOps/05

Azure Resource Manager Books

Quick and Practical Guide to ARM Templates by Aman Sharma

• https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C8LSBSN

Azure Resource Manager Template GIT resources

Azure Citadel – Workshops, Demos, Labs, Guides, Videos

• https://azurecitadel.github.io/workshops/arm/theoryTemplates/