Exercise 7. Exporting a Template from Azure Portal

Goal: See your week‑one Ubuntu VM and its network as Infrastructure as Code by exporting the deployment to an ARM template. This will give you a concrete reference before we author templates ourselves.

Estimated time: 15–25 minutes

Learning outcomes

• Understand how Azure resources are represented in ARM.
• Identify parameters, variables, resources, and dependsOn.
• Map resource types to our diagram: VNet/Subnet, NSG, Public IP, NIC, Ubuntu VM.

Prerequisites

• You already created the VM in the Azure Portal (from Exercise 1/2/3/5/6).
• Access to the Resource Group that holds the VM and its networking.

What you’ll produce

• A downloaded ZIP containing template.json and parameters.json (generated by the portal).
• A short note with the resource types you found and how they relate.

Steps

1. Open your Resource Group

   • Azure Portal → Resource groups → select the RG that contains your VM, VNet, NSG, Public IP, NIC.

2. Export the template

   • In the RG, look for Export template (sometimes under Settings or Automation).
   • Click Export template → Download (ZIP).

3. Unpack & open in VS Code

   • Unzip locally. Open the folder in VS Code.
   • Files you should see: template.json, parameters.json, and a README snippet.
   • (Optional) Install Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Tools extension for JSON schema help.

4. Read the template (guided tour)

   • parameters → values the template expects (e.g., location, admin username).
   • variables → name building or convenience values.
   • resources → look for these types and write them down:
     • Microsoft.Network/virtualNetworks
     • Microsoft.Network/networkSecurityGroups
     • Microsoft.Network/publicIPAddresses
     • Microsoft.Network/networkInterfaces
     • Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines
   • dependsOn → note how NIC depends on Public IP/NSG/VNet, and how VM depends on NIC.
   • outputs → check if any are present (often none in exports).

5. Map to the diagram (quick check)

   • Internet → Public IP → NIC/NSG → VM (Nginx via cloud‑init).
   • Confirm each hop exists in resources and note the names.

6. Notes on exports (know the limits)

   • Exports are best‑effort and may not reflect all features or your naming conventions.
   • Parameterization is basic; we’ll improve this with Bicep in the next exercise.

Verification

Create a short note (5–8 bullets) answering:

• Which resource types did you find?
• What does the VM depend on?
• Which NSG rules exist for SSH (22) and HTTP (80)?
• Where is the location set (parameter or literal)?
• Anything surprising or unclear in the export?

Stretch (optional)

• If you have Bicep installed, try:

  az bicep decompile --file template.json
  

  Open the generated template.bicep and compare readability.

Cleanup

None. Keep the exported template for reference; we’ll author a minimal template next.