IT:AD:Azure:Bicep
Summary
Azure is a infrastructure and cloud service provider service that provides several ways to develop the resources desired. THere is the introductory, manual “ClickOps”-based approach, using the Azure portal's screens, forms and buttons to develop the desired compbination of infrastructure and/or services. Or the more mature, maintainable, automatable approach based on declarative code.
The approach to developing infrastructure and/or services using declarative code has also developed over time. The original method was via the development of JSON based Azure Resource Management (ARM) templates. Using powershell to submit the idempotent arm template provided predictable and quickly usable outcomes. The JSON syntax to create an ARM template can be verbose and require complicated expressions. The precision required to develop the JSON files may have been too hard for some (that, and rubbish legacy concepts of portability led to [[IT/AD/Teraform/).
Hence Bicep. Bicep has feature parity with ARM and is easier to use. But While Bicep is easier to write and understand, ARM isn't going anywhere.
Microsoft officially recommends the use of Bicep (but does that mean they recommend preferring Bicep? I don't know).
Prerequisites:
- Visual Studio Code,
- the Bicep extension for VSC
- the Azure CLI or Azure PowerShell