GitHub Actions and Azure - Deploying ARM templates with GitHub Actions
Before deploying application code, you need cloud infrastructure in place. This episode demonstrates automating Azure infrastructure provisioning using ARM templates and GitHub Actions.
What You’ll Learn
- What ARM templates (Azure Resource Manager templates) are and why they’re declarative, deterministic, and idempotent
- How ARM templates differ from imperative approaches like Azure CLI or PowerShell scripts
- ARM template structure:
schema,contentVersion,parameters,variables,resources, andoutputs - Using the
azure/arm-deployGitHub Action to deploy ARM templates from a workflow - Repository organisation: separating
source/(application code) fromtemplates/(ARM templates) - Adding the
actions/checkoutstep—and why forgetting it causes cryptic “file not found” workflow failures - Using
secureStringparameter types to protect secrets in ARM template inputs and outputs - Browsing the Azure Quickstart Templates gallery for production-ready ARM template samples
Series Context
This is the second episode in the GitHub Actions and Azure series. The infrastructure deployment workflow built here becomes the first job in the multi-job pipeline extended in the next episode to also compile and deploy application code.
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