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Start with Azure Blueprints

  • June 30, 2020
  • 8 min read
Cloud and Virtualization Architect. Florent is specializing in public, hybrid, and private cloud technologies. He is a Microsoft MVP in Cloud and Datacenter Management and an MCSE in Private Cloud.
Cloud and Virtualization Architect. Florent is specializing in public, hybrid, and private cloud technologies. He is a Microsoft MVP in Cloud and Datacenter Management and an MCSE in Private Cloud.


Azure Blueprint has now been available for over a year in preview already. This service, currently free, will help you to manage all of your subscriptions by giving a base and connectivity to all of your subscriptions.

In Azure Portal, search the Azure Blueprints service:

Azure Blueprint service

Create a new blueprint. You have some templates, or you can start with a blank template:

Create a new blueprint

In this example, I’ll start with a blank template. Provide a name, a description, and a definition location (Management group (the preferred method) or subscription):

Provide a name, a description and a definition location

Basics

On the next page, Artifacts, we will complete with what we want to do, in our blueprint.

In this example, I’ll create my base resource groups with a virtual network, a storage account, and give some permissions to some people. Under subscription, click on Add artifact:

Add artifact

Choose Resource group to add the first resource group in the blueprint. You can provide the name and location directly here, or you can provide these values when you deploy the template. You can optionally add tags:

Choose Resource group

You should have this:

Artifacts

Now, we will add some permissions to some people. On the subscription level, click on Add artifact and choose Role assignment:

Choose Role assignment

I’ll do the same for the resource group:

Do the same for resource group

Next, we will deploy the storage account in the Storage resource group, with the following template:

Artifact type

I’ll now add my virtual network (without connectivity) to the network resource group. You can directly configure your VNet peering, etc, in the template, to perform the connectivity:

Artifact display name

Our template is almost done:

Template is almost done

Click on Save Draft to save the blueprint. You should now see this:

Blueprint preview

To start the deployment, click on Publish blueprint. Provide a version number and a change note to have a better follow-up, following by clicking on Publish:

 Publish blueprint

You can now assign the blueprint by clicking on the corresponding button. Here, choose the name, location, and version of the blueprint.

You have the choice to lock or not resources created by the deployment:

 Assign the blueprint

If during template creation you choose to not provide values for deployment, you will need to provide these values:

Artifact parameters

Click on Assign, make a coffee and let the magic start 😊

If you go to the Assigned blueprints you should see your deployment:

 Assigned blueprints

And the detail of the succeeded blueprint:

And the detail of the succeeded blueprint

My resources have been created:

Resource group

Resource group

Subnets

Access control

You can Unassign a blueprint or update the assignment to a new version, for example, directly in the assigned blueprint:

Assignment

If you unassign the blueprint, resources created by the blueprint in the subscription will remain.

I have no idea when the service will move in GA, but, with a preview of more than one year, you can use it without any problem, in production, to automate the deployment of new services/subscriptions.

Found Florent’s article helpful? Looking for a reliable, high-performance, and cost-effective shared storage solution for your production cluster?
Dmytro Malynka
Dmytro Malynka StarWind Virtual SAN Product Manager
We’ve got you covered! StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) is specifically designed to provide highly-available shared storage for Hyper-V, vSphere, and KVM clusters. With StarWind VSAN, simplicity is key: utilize the local disks of your hypervisor hosts and create shared HA storage for your VMs. Interested in learning more? Book a short StarWind VSAN demo now and see it in action!