Azure Templates: Storing, Sharing, Determining Outcomes

• Azure Resource Manager features help securely share deployment templates and reduce risk of unexpected deployment problems.
• Organizations should evaluate these features to help with governance of Azure deployments.

Azure Resource Manager templates are JSON files that can be used when creating and modifying Azure deployments. Two features can help share and deploy Azure Resource Manager templates: template specs allow templates to be managed as Azure resources, and a what-if function available in command-line tools and via APIs can help predict the effects of templates before they are deployed.

Azure Resource Manager Template Specs

Organizations should use templates to enforce governance in Azure deployments. Templates can include approved deployment parameters, such as VM and database sizes, security settings, and tags. Templates can be implemented by directly working with their JSON content or with the recently introduced Bicep programming language.

So-called template specs allow templates to be stored and managed as Azure resources.