Terraform - Azure Quickstarts

Overview

Reference Azure Terraform templates for the most common Azure deployment patterns.

Azure Authentication

The following arguments are required to authenticate against the AzureRM Provider:

• subscription_id - The subscription ID to use. It can also be sourced from the ARM_SUBSCRIPTION_ID environment variable.
• client_id - The client ID to use. It can also be sourced from the ARM_CLIENT_ID environment variable.
• client_secret - The client secret to use. It can also be sourced from the ARM_CLIENT_SECRET environment variable.
• tenant_id - The tenant ID to use. It can also be sourced from the ARM_TENANT_ID environment variable.
• environment - (Optional) The cloud environment to use. It can also be sourced from the ARM_ENVIRONMENT environment variable. Supported values are:
  • public (default)
  • usgovernment
  • german
  • china

Obtaining the Azure Authentication details

Authenticate using the Azure CLI.

> az login

If you have multiple Azure Subscriptions, their details will be returned by the az login command. Set the SUBSCRIPTION_ID environment variable to hold the value of the returned id field from the Subscription you want to use.

Set the Subscription that you want to use for this session.

> az account set --subscription="${SUBSCRIPTION_ID}"

Subscription and Tenant Details

Query the account to get the Subscription Id and Tenant Id values.

> az account show --query "{subscriptionId:id, tenantId:tenantId}"

Create Azure Credentials

It is advisable to create separate credentials for Terraform. These can be created as follows:

az ad sp create-for-rbac --role="Contributor" --scopes="/subscriptions/${SUBSCRIPTION_ID}"

This will output your client_id, client_secret (password), sp_name, and tenant. Take note of the client_id and client_secret.

You can confirm your credentials (service principal) by opening a new shell and run the following commands substituting in the returned values for sp_name, client_secret, and tenant:

> az login --service-principal -u SP_NAME -p CLIENT_SECRET --tenant TENANT
> az vm list-sizes --location westus

Environment Variables

Set the following environment variables from the values you have obtained:

• ARM_SUBSCRIPTION_ID
• ARM_CLIENT_ID
• ARM_CLIENT_SECRET
• ARM_TENANT_ID