How to check the resource exists in the arm template - azure

Question

How do i identify the azure resource is exists or not in the ARM templates by the resource type and identifier

Answer 1

It is actually kind of possible. You can use resource group tags to mark a current deployed version and skip deployment if the tag is set. All this could be achieved via linked template.
Note that we don't check for resource existence per se but we still allow writing ARM template that could contain one time initialization templates. The last will restore the resource if resource group was deleted and resources were lost (given that you created the resource group again). You can extend this to support per-resource tags which will be more useful in some cases.
The template that starts the deployment may look like this:
{
"$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2015-01-01/deploymentTemplate.json#",
"contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",
"parameters": {
"DeploymentTemplateLink": {
"type": "string"
},
"DeploymentVersion": {
"defaultValue": 1,
"type": "int"
}
},
"variables": {
"rgWithDefaultVersion": {
"tags": {
"Version": "0"
}
}
},
"resources": [
{
"type": "Microsoft.Resources/deployments",
"apiVersion": "2017-05-10",
"name": "DeploymentTemplate",
"condition": "[less(int(union(variables('rgWithDefaultVersion'), resourceGroup()).tags['Version']), parameters('DeploymentVersion'))]",
"properties": {
"mode": "Incremental",
"templateLink": {
"uri": "[parameters('DeploymentTemplateLink')]",
"contentVersion": "1.0.0.0"
},
"parameters": {
"DeploymentVersion": {
"value": "[parameters('DeploymentVersion')]"
}
}
}
}
]
}
The linked template's condition looks into tags and returns true only if current version (stored in the tag) is less than the requested one. You don't actually have to maintain versioning: just don't set the DeploymentVersion parameter and it will deploy only for the first time. If you decide to redeploy anyway you have always an option to increase the version, which will cause deployment of the linked template (aka "main deployment").
The main deployment template is on you, but it should contain a tags resource in order to maintain the logic.
{
"$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2015-01-01/deploymentTemplate.json#",
"contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",
"parameters": {
"DeploymentVersion": {
"defaultValue": 1,
"type": "int"
}
},
"variables": {},
"resources": [
{
"type": "Microsoft.Resources/tags",
"name": "default",
"apiVersion": "2019-10-01",
"dependsOn": [],
"properties": {
"tags": {
"Version": "[string(parameters('DeploymentVersion'))]"
}
}
}
]
}
Remark for those who didn't understand the union() and rgWithDefaultVersion thing. ARM template deployment will fail if referenced object doesn't contain a property. In our case we have two such properties: 'tags' and 'Version'. 'Tags' will exist only if particular resource group has or ever had tags. 'Version' will exist only after we already wrote it once (in the main deployment). Therefore before we access them we perform union() operation on returned object with a proper default one, ensuring that we can safely access the mentioned properties.

Answer 2

there is no way of doing that in an arm template. you can use some external source (like powershell) to determine that and pass in parameter with appropriate value, alternatively you can use tags to figure that out (have a tag that represents an existence\absence of a resource).

Answer 3

Resource Manager provides the following functions for getting resource values: Resource functions for Azure Resource Manager templates
You could wrap your template with a piece of powershell\whatever, that would determine if the resource exists, and pass in the parameter value depending on that and use a conditional statement in the template that would decide what to do based on the input (but the input has to come from elsewhere)

Answer 4

I needed a solution to this recently to basically do an incremental update to a SQL server. Since you can't do this; the template will fail with a NameAlreadyExists error.
So I needed to check the resource doesn't exist and only create if it doesn't.
Add a "condition" check for the azure resource id exists; don't create if it does.
{
...
"condition": "[empty(resourceId('[resourceGroup().id]', 'Microsoft.SQL/servers', parameters('serverName')))]",
...
}
You can do this for any resource type.