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Deploy resources with ARM templates and Azure PowerShell

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This article explains how to use Azure PowerShell with Azure Resource Manager templates (ARM templates) to deploy your resources to Azure. If you aren't familiar with the concepts of deploying and managing your Azure solutions, see template deployment overview.

Tip

We recommend Bicep because it offers the same capabilities as ARM templates and the syntax is easier to use. To learn more, see Deploy resources with Bicep and Azure PowerShell.

Prerequisites

You need a template to deploy. If you don't already have one, download and save an example template from the Azure Quickstart templates repo. The local file name used in this article is C:\MyTemplates\azuredeploy.json.

You need to install Azure PowerShell and connect to Azure:

If you don't have PowerShell installed, you can use Azure Cloud Shell. For more information, see Deploy ARM templates from Azure Cloud Shell.

Required permissions

To deploy a Bicep file or ARM template, you need write access on the resources you're deploying and access to all operations on the Microsoft.Resources/deployments resource type. For example, to deploy a virtual machine, you need Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/write and Microsoft.Resources/deployments/* permissions. The what-if operation has the same permission requirements.

For a list of roles and permissions, see Azure built-in roles.

Deployment scope

You can target your deployment to a resource group, subscription, management group, or tenant. Depending on the scope of the deployment, you use different commands.

For every scope, the user deploying the template must have the required permissions to create resources.

Deployment name

When deploying an ARM template, you can give the deployment a name. This name can help you retrieve the deployment from the deployment history. If you don't provide a name for the deployment, the name of the template file is used. For example, if you deploy a template named azuredeploy.json and don't specify a deployment name, the deployment is named azuredeploy.

Every time you run a deployment, an entry is added to the resource group's deployment history with the deployment name. If you run another deployment and give it the same name, the earlier entry is replaced with the current deployment. If you want to maintain unique entries in the deployment history, give each deployment a unique name.

To create a unique name, you can assign a random number.

$suffix = Get-Random -Maximum 1000
$deploymentName = "ExampleDeployment" + $suffix

Or, add a date value.

$today=Get-Date -Format "MM-dd-yyyy"
$deploymentName="ExampleDeployment"+"$today"

If you run concurrent deployments to the same resource group with the same deployment name, only the last deployment is completed. Any deployments with the same name that haven't finished are replaced by the last deployment. For example, if you run a deployment named newStorage that deploys a storage account named storage1, and at the same time run another deployment named newStorage that deploys a storage account named storage2, you deploy only one storage account. The resulting storage account is named storage2.

However, if you run a deployment named newStorage that deploys a storage account named storage1, and immediately after it completes you run another deployment named newStorage that deploys a storage account named storage2, then you have two storage accounts. One is named storage1, and the other is named storage2. But, you only have one entry in the deployment history.

When you specify a unique name for each deployment, you can run them concurrently without conflict. If you run a deployment named newStorage1 that deploys a storage account named storage1, and at the same time run another deployment named newStorage2 that deploys a storage account named storage2, then you have two storage accounts and two entries in the deployment history.

To avoid conflicts with concurrent deployments and to ensure unique entries in the deployment history, give each deployment a unique name.

Deploy local template

You can deploy a template from your local machine or one that is stored externally. This section describes deploying a local template.

If you're deploying to a resource group that doesn't exist, create the resource group. The name of the resource group can only include alphanumeric characters, periods, underscores, hyphens, and parenthesis. It can be up to 90 characters. The name can't end in a period.

New-AzResourceGroup -Name ExampleGroup -Location "Central US"

To deploy a local template, use the -TemplateFile parameter in the deployment command. The following example also shows how to set a parameter value that comes from the template.

New-AzResourceGroupDeployment `
  -Name ExampleDeployment `
  -ResourceGroupName ExampleGroup `
  -TemplateFile <path-to-template>

The deployment can take several minutes to complete.

Deploy remote template

Instead of storing ARM templates on your local machine, you may prefer to store them in an external location. You can store templates in a source control repository (such as GitHub). Or, you can store them in an Azure storage account for shared access in your organization.

Note

To deploy a template or reference a linked template that is stored in a private GitHub repo, see a custom solution documented in Creating a Custom and Secure Azure Portal Offering. You can create an Azure function that pulls the GitHub token out of Azure Key Vault.

If you're deploying to a resource group that doesn't exist, create the resource group. The name of the resource group can only include alphanumeric characters, periods, underscores, hyphens, and parenthesis. It can be up to 90 characters. The name can't end in a period.

New-AzResourceGroup -Name ExampleGroup -Location "Central US"

To deploy an external template, use the -TemplateUri parameter.

New-AzResourceGroupDeployment `
  -Name remoteTemplateDeployment `
  -ResourceGroupName ExampleGroup `
  -TemplateUri https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/azure-quickstart-templates/master/quickstarts/microsoft.storage/storage-account-create/azuredeploy.json

The preceding example requires a publicly accessible URI for the template, which works for most scenarios because your template shouldn't include sensitive data. If you need to specify sensitive data (like an admin password), pass that value as a secure parameter. However, if you want to manage access to the template, consider using template specs.

To deploy remote linked templates with relative path that are stored in a storage account, use QueryString to specify the SAS token:

New-AzResourceGroupDeployment `
  -Name linkedTemplateWithRelativePath `
  -ResourceGroupName "myResourceGroup" `
  -TemplateUri "https://stage20210126.blob.core.windows.net/template-staging/mainTemplate.json" `
  -QueryString "$sasToken"

For more information, see Use relative path for linked templates.

Deploy template spec

Instead of deploying a local or remote template, you can create a template spec. The template spec is a resource in your Azure subscription that contains an ARM template. It makes it easy to securely share the template with users in your organization. You use Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC) to grant access to the template spec. This feature is currently in preview.

The following examples show how to create and deploy a template spec.

First, create the template spec by providing the ARM template.

New-AzTemplateSpec `
  -Name storageSpec `
  -Version 1.0 `
  -ResourceGroupName templateSpecsRg `
  -Location westus2 `
  -TemplateJsonFile ./mainTemplate.json

Then, get the ID for template spec and deploy it.

$id = (Get-AzTemplateSpec -Name storageSpec -ResourceGroupName templateSpecsRg -Version 1.0).Versions.Id

New-AzResourceGroupDeployment `
  -ResourceGroupName demoRG `
  -TemplateSpecId $id

For more information, see Azure Resource Manager template specs.

Preview changes

Before deploying your template, you can preview the changes the template will make to your environment. Use the what-if operation to verify that the template makes the changes that you expect. What-if also validates the template for errors.

Pass parameter values

To pass parameter values, you can use either inline parameters or a parameters file. The parameter file can be either a Bicep parameters file or a JSON parameters file.

Inline parameters

To pass inline parameters, provide the names of the parameter with the New-AzResourceGroupDeployment command. For example, to pass a string and array to a template, use:

$arrayParam = "value1", "value2"
New-AzResourceGroupDeployment -ResourceGroupName testgroup `
  -TemplateFile <path-to-template> `
  -exampleString "inline string" `
  -exampleArray $arrayParam

You can use the TemplateParameterObject parameter to pass through a hashtable that contains the parameters for the template.

$params = @{
  exampleString = "inline string"
  exampleArray = "value1", "value2"
}

New-AzResourceGroupDeployment -ResourceGroupName testgroup `
  -TemplateFile <path-to-bicep> `
  -TemplateParameterObject $params

You can also get the contents of file and provide that content as an inline parameter.

$arrayParam = "value1", "value2"
New-AzResourceGroupDeployment -ResourceGroupName testgroup `
  -TemplateFile <path-to-template> `
  -exampleString $(Get-Content -Path c:\MyTemplates\stringcontent.txt -Raw) `
  -exampleArray $arrayParam

Getting a parameter value from a file is helpful when you need to provide configuration values. For example, you can provide cloud-init values for a Linux virtual machine.

If you need to pass in an array of objects, create hash tables in PowerShell and add them to an array. Pass that array as a parameter during deployment.

$hash1 = @{ Name = "firstSubnet"; AddressPrefix = "10.0.0.0/24"}
$hash2 = @{ Name = "secondSubnet"; AddressPrefix = "10.0.1.0/24"}
$subnetArray = $hash1, $hash2
New-AzResourceGroupDeployment -ResourceGroupName testgroup `
  -TemplateFile <path-to-template> `
  -exampleArray $subnetArray

JSON parameter files

Rather than passing parameters as inline values in your script, you may find it easier to use a JSON file that contains the parameter values. The parameter file can be a local file or an external file with an accessible URI.

For more information about the parameter file, see Create Resource Manager parameter file.

To pass a local parameter file, use the TemplateParameterFile parameter:

New-AzResourceGroupDeployment `
  -Name ExampleDeployment `
  -ResourceGroupName ExampleResourceGroup `
  -TemplateFile <path-to-template> `
  -TemplateParameterFile c:\MyTemplates\storage.parameters.json

To pass an external parameter file, use the TemplateParameterUri parameter:

New-AzResourceGroupDeployment `
  -Name ExampleDeployment `
  -ResourceGroupName ExampleResourceGroup `
  -TemplateUri https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/azure-quickstart-templates/master/quickstarts/microsoft.storage/storage-account-create/azuredeploy.json `
  -TemplateParameterUri https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/azure-quickstart-templates/master/quickstarts/microsoft.storage/storage-account-create/azuredeploy.parameters.json

For more information about parameters file, see Create Resource Manager parameters file.

Bicep parameter files

With Azure PowerShell version 10.4.0 or later, and Bicep CLI version 0.22.6 or later, you can deploy an ARM template file by utilizing a Bicep parameter file. With the using statement within the Bicep parameters file, there is no need to provide the -TemplateFile switch when specifying a Bicep parameter file for the -TemplateParameterFile switch.

The following example shows a parameters file named storage.bicepparam. The file is in the same directory where the command is run.

New-AzResourceGroupDeployment `
  -Name ExampleDeployment `
  -ResourceGroupName ExampleResourceGroup `
  -TemplateParameterFile storage.bicepparam

For more information about Bicep parameters file, see Bicep parameters file.

Next steps