If you are using Azure Verified Modules, either the Bicep or Terraform modules, you have likely encountered scenarios where you wished for additional features. This blog is a practical guide to help you make your first contribution to Azure Verified Modules, enabling you to turn those additional features into reality. This blog will focus on the Bicep side of AVM, but can also be used when contributing to the Terraform AVM modules! What are Azure Verified Modules? Azure Verified Modules (AVM) is a Microsoft initiative aimed at establishing a benchmark for Infrastructure as Code (IaC) standards ..read more

Before the release of the user-defined functions functionality, there was a “hacky” way to create your own functions, namely through creating modules and using outputs. Now with the release of user-defined functions, you can easily create your own user-defined functions. These are separate functions in addition to the built-in Bicep functions. In this blog post, you’ll learn what a user-defined function is and how to create and use your own functions. Note! To use user-defined functions you need Azure Bicep version 0.26.54 or newer. What is a user-defined function? A user-defined function is c ..read more

In DevOps, the focus is primarily on automation and having dependable deployments. However, sometimes human intervention is necessary, particularly for deployments to critical environments like production or other business-critical systems. Azure DevOps has some measures that you can configure to implement these controls through approvals and checks. Azure DevOps has some measures that you can configure to implement these controls through approvals and checks. These approvals and checks can be configured in multiple places within an Azure DevOps organisation, such as in environments and on ser ..read more

Stable, scalable and secure infrastructure as code is important to have a performing Azure environment. As organisations adopt Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to automate and manage their cloud resources, the need for maintaining code quality and enforcing best practices becomes important. This is where Azure Bicep linting comes into play, especially when integrated with Azure DevOps build validation. What is linting in general? Linting is the process of running a program that analyses code for potential errors, stylistic issues, and deviations from coding standards or best practices. It helps de ..read more

I am happy to share my side-project on Azure Bicep: Azure Bicep Cheat Sheet – A quick-reference guide! What is a cheat sheet? Cheat sheets are valuable tools offering quick references to essential information. They enhance efficiency by providing concise summaries and consolidating vast details into a digestible format. In this cheat sheet, several Azure Bicep topics are covered: Basics Modules Conditions Loops Data manipulation User Defined Types … and more! This Azure Bicep cheat sheet will grow over time and community contributions are more than welcome! If you like this cheat sheet pleas ..read more

Prior to the introduction of Azure Bicep user-defined types, you were limited to using types such as string, int, bool, array, and object. A significant advantage of user-defined types is that these allow you to assign a strongly typed value to an object. In this blog, you will learn about what user-defined types are and how to create your own user-defined type. Note! To use user-defined types you need Azure Bicep version 0.12.1 or newer. What are user-defined types? With user-defined types, you can create custom objects in your Bicep files. These custom objects can serve as a type, on par wit ..read more

Did you know Azure Bicep can read environment variables? In this blog, we’ll explore how to use environment variables in Azure Bicep when set from an Azure Pipeline. readEnvironmentVariable function Alongside the release of Bicepparam is the readEnvironmentVariable function, designed to retrieve environment variables either from your deployment agent or your local computer, depending on the deployment source Let’s take a look at the readEnvironmentVariable function. This function has two parameters: readEnvironmentVariable(environmentVariableName: string, default: string) The first paramete ..read more

With version 0.7.4 of Azure Bicep, the feature “generate Bicep parameters” was introduced. In this blog, you will read about how to generate parameters from a Bicep template using the Azure CLI or Bicep Visual Studio Code extension. Example Bicep template To illustrate how generating parameters works, I have created an example Bicep template. The following Bicep template defines a virtual machine, network interface card, a reference to a subnet, and defined a few parameters: This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below ..read more

Are you looking for a curated list of Azure DevOps blogs, videos, or podcast content? Then this post is for you. I have bundled helpful Microsoft official and community-created Azure DevOps content and listed them on GitHub. Repository The goal of this repository is to have a central place with awesome Azure DevOps content. So if you have an interesting blog, video, or podcast that you want to share with the community, open a pull request and add your content to the list! This repository is community driven! Have a look at the awesome-azure-devops repository: https://github.com/johnlokerse/awe ..read more

In this blog, I am writing about Bicep CIDR functions and will show a practical example on how to use this. With these CIDR functions subnetting in Bicep has been made easier. We can now create subnets programmatically. What is CIDR? CIDR stands for Classless Inter-Domain Routing and it is a method of allocating IP addresses and routing internet protocol packets. CIDR uses prefix a notation to represent IP address blocks. In this notation, an IP address is followed by a forward slash and a number that indicates the length of the network prefix. For example, 192.168.1.0/24 represents a block of ..read more