I am trying to publish Global parameters to ADF using CI pipeline which is generating dynamic ARM Templates. ARM Template generated is not proper and not having any parameters related to ADF.
Usually if you are using "live mode" the Global Parameters are placed in "Factory" folder once ARM template is exported.
However, to include global parameters in the ARM template, select "Include in ARM temple" check box from the Manage hub.
Since above is only available in "Git mode" and disabled in "live mode" or "Data Factory" mode, if you are using automatic publishing, use PowerShell script method instead. Checkout the official MS Doc for detailed steps to Deploying using PowerShell.
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Where and how to use artifactsLocation and _artifactsLocationSasToken in Arm template deployments. Are these used only for nested deployments.
Can we use these for custom VM extension of the Virtual machine as part of post provisioning activity, after VM is built or should the extension be added as part of the VM build deployment template only.
VM Custom script extension - (Initialize and format data drives, Mount file shares for instance)
Azure quick start templates, have the parameter values for these as default for artifactsLocation and type securestring for _artifactsLocationSasToken. How these values are populated in the ARM deployment runtime.
It would be great if someone can provide documentation around the same / step by step process or share an existing working custom script extension template.
There's nothing inherent in the platform that makes _artifactsLocation and _artifactsLocationSasToken special... it's just a pattern (well used) that has developed for staging artifacts needed for a deployment. The pattern is to stage all artifacts together and then use the uri of the main template as a relative location. The defaultValue generally used for _artifactsLocation is:
"defaultValue": "[deployment().properties.templateLink.uri]"
The deployment() function is inherent and contains the uri passed in for the main template.
That said, you can use those values anyway you see fit and the primary use case is for retrieving any artifact needed by any resource. For example:
Custom Script Extension
https://github.com/Azure/azure-quickstart-templates/blob/master/demos/vm-winrm-windows/azuredeploy.json#L256-L259
MSDeploy Packages for WebApps
https://github.com/Azure/azure-quickstart-templates/blob/master/demos/private-endpoint-sql-from-appservice/azuredeploy.json#L277
DSC Configuration Modules
https://github.com/Azure/azure-quickstart-templates/blob/master/demos/iis-2vm-sql-1vm/azuredeploy.json#L585
etc, etc...
That help?
Exported Azure ARM template contains a lot's of useless information, let's say snapshots. I would like export actual resource definitions only.
Is it possible to filter unnecessary items out? I would like to convert this template to Bicep (to deploy all the resources into an another subscription) and now I have to clear manually all the unused items from the exported ARM template.
Thank you Gopa. Posting your suggestion as an answer to help other community members.
Exporting an ARM template from the resource group or resource will give you a template that is a snapshot of the current properties so it includes all the properties which were changed after the initial deployment.
You can also try exporting templates from the deployment history too which will give you an option to export your initial version without the changes you made after each deployment.
You can maintain all resources in source control as ARM templates and use CI/CD to deploy, whenever there is a change, so you can have our latest version of ARM templates and use it to build up a new environment when a need comes.
You can export the template that was used to deploy existing resources. The template you get is exactly the one that was used for deployment.
Export template after deployment
Select the resource group you want to export.
Select the link under Deployments.
Select one of the deployments from the deployment history.
Select Template. The template used for this deployment is displayed, and is available for download.
I have an ARM template, which I will be using it to deploy resources (Mentioned as in Azure Portal) via Azure DevOps Pipeline. These ARM templates were created using my Dev Subscription. If I need to use this same ARM template to move to production, I need to manually update the subscription id etc in the ARM template and then run the respective pipelines. Is there any way to automate this manual updation process in ARM template.
I have tried using File Transform Agent job available under Azure DevOps Release pipeline. But since the values are available inside nested loops of ARM templates, it failed. Is there any PowerShell script that will be suitable for this process of updating values.
I don't want to manually update the ids under the ARM Template. Instead, I want to update it automatically.
Set Json Property task might help to set the property with specific value.
First in the marketplace search for "set Json property" task and install it for your organization.
Then you can set the property path and the value accordingly. check here for detail usage
Instead of hard coding in ARM templates you can use parameters file. For dev and prod you can have separate files and while deploying pass ARM Template along with parameter file whichever is required.
You can use AKV (Azure Key Vault) to access your subscription details in parameter file
subscription().subscriptionid will get you the details
Normally when i deploy through visual studio _artifactsLocation shows when editing the parameters so what should this be in VSTS and how do I set it?
2018-02-21T08:49:46.1918199Z ##[error]Deployment template validation failed: 'The value for the template parameter '_artifactsLocation' at line '1' and column '182' is not provided. Please see https://aka.ms/arm-deploy/#parameter-file for usage details.'.
2018-02-21T08:49:46.1919769Z ##[error]Task failed while creating or updating the template deployment.
You can specify it in parameters file, then specify the file path in Template parameters input box of Azure Resource Group Deployment task if you are using.
Also, the parameters can be override by specifying in Override template parameters input box of Azure Resource Group Deployment task.
If you are calling script through Azure PowerShell task, you can specify it in the arguments: -ArtifactStagingDirectory, related issue: The value for the template parameter '_artifactsLocation' is not provided
This sounds like you are using the Azure Resource Group deployment template from VS to deploy via VSTS.
It uses MSDeploy as part of the ARM template deployment to deploy your service.
The Powershell script that is generated by the VS project template uploads a ZIP-file containing your service to Blob storage, and puts the URL and other information into _artifactsLocation and other ARM template parameters.
Instead of doing that, you can remove the artifacts related parameters and the MSDeploy resource from the ARM template. Then the template ONLY contains infrastructure related resources.
After this, add a "Deploy to App Service" step in the VSTS Release pipeline after the ARM template deployment. That can then be used to deploy your service code.
If you are using a separate parameters json file, you'll need to initialise the _artifactsLocation and _artifactsLocationSasToken there. You can give them empty strings, like:
"_artifactsLocation": {
"value": ""
},
"_artifactsLocationSasToken": {
"value": ""
},
They should automatically get their values from a PowerShell script. I'm using the AzureResourceManagerTemplateDeployment#3 task, it would probably work with AzureResourceGroupDeployment#2 as well.
I see several examples of Azure Resource Manager templates, referencing artifacts directly in Git Hub.
As in the following example, taken from this quick start template:
"modulesUrl": {
"type": "string",
"defaultValue": "https://github.com/Azure/azure-quickstart-templates/raw/master/dsc-extension-azure-automation-pullserver/UpdateLCMforAAPull.zip",
"metadata": {
"description": "URL for the DSC configuration package. NOTE: Can be a Github url(raw) to the zip file (this is the default value)"
}
As an orgnaisation, we can't use free Git Hub as code is public and as we pay for VSTS already... At the moment, we have to upload artifacts to Azure Storage Accounts using the VSTS build task Azure Resource Group Deployment task and reference them from there. It would be nice if we could remove this step.
So, is there a way to reference artifacts directly from a VSTS repository in a similar way to Git Hub? I assume the URI would require some form of authentication, such as a PAT token.
All I can find is this, but I think it is referring to packages. I don't need to create packages for ARM templates and DSC configurations.
There is a task called Azure Resource Group Deployment Task, we use this to deploy the ARM template.
According to you sample template, it's using publicly accessible http/https URLs in GitHub. Afraid this is not accessible via vsts url. In VSTS you need to follow below process (Need to use a SAS Token):
You could provide some extra parameters using the output variables defined in the Azure File Copy Task (storageURI, storageToken). This are needed because in the template we use the _artifactsLocation and _artifactsLocationSasToken parameters to build the storage URL to the files.
More details please refer this blog: Setting up VSTS with ARM Templates