2. Automation and governance in Azure

In the last chapter, we saw how infrastructure in the cloud works from not only a native but also a hybrid perspective. We will now take a look at how we can build resources in Azure. You can now go to the Azure portal and create any Azure resource; however, this can be very cumbersome without automation. Automation in Azure is accomplished through Azure DevOps and Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates. We are strictly sticking to out-of-the-box Microsoft solutions, but there are quite a few other deployment and development tools available that can help you accomplish automation tasks. Once you've deployed your resources, you need to ensure they're secure.

In this chapter, we are going to cover the following:

• Azure DevOps and why it is important
• ARM templates and the different ways they can be used
• Fundamentals and best practices of deploying Azure Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
• Benefits and best practices for identity and access control in Azure
• Azure governance

Before we dive into how you can accomplish automation and what it means to have IaC, let's get an overview of Azure DevOps and ARM templates to build a foundation for this automation approach.