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Bicep deployments using YAML based variable sharing

Intro

Bicep deployments are typically done using one parameter file that maps directly to the Bicep file. Each parameter file needs to have exact parameter match for the deployment to succeed. This leads to a situation where parameter definitions are hard to share for other deployments. It is also beneficial to make Bicep deployments modular. We will further show that using YAML for variable handling is easier to maintain, as it is more human readable than the JSON format. We will be using MS provided Bicep resource modules in the example (https://github.com/Azure/ResourceModules). These contains extensive and well defined Bicep templates with related documenation.

Using variables

The MS provided resource modules are using variables from the main bicep template. Each of the resource modules Bicep support loading of variables loading of JSON files with variable definitions.

References

1. Bicep resource modules, https://github.com/Azure/ResourceModules
2. YQ YAML<-> JSON converter, https://github.com/mikefarah/yq