What is IaC?

In the previous chapter, we talked about using the Azure CLI and Azure Powershell for managing and deploying Azure resources. We also mentioned that you can use the Azure portal for manual provisioning and configuration. Unfortunately, those methods are not always solutions that allow automation.

Imagine the following scenario – you need to deploy a cluster of virtual machines (VMs) that will be used by some teams for their projects. You could do everything step by step using the Azure portal (the easiest option for beginners as it’ll show you all the necessary resources), use the command line to deploy components one by one, or even prepare a simple shell script that contains all the commands:

az vm create \
    --resource-group <resource-group-name> \
    --name <vm-name> \
    --image Win2022AzureEditionCore \
    --public-ip-sku Standard \
   ...