How to access Terraform modules in another private repo using GitHub Actions

Having Terraform modules in a separate repo is a common practice to easily reuse modules over projects. But what’s the best way to get access to this private repo using GitHub Actions.

Enterprise Azure ARM Templates

Lately I’ve given many workshops to all kinds of customers of my employer Xpirit about the automatic deployment of Azure resources. Mainly with VSTS.

Infrastructure as Code and VSTS

Written by Peter Groenewegen and Pascal Naber for the Xpirit Magazine

Your team is in the process of developing a new application feature, and the infrastructure has to be adapted. The first step is to change a file in your source control system that describes your infrastructure. When the changed definition file is saved in your source control system it triggers a new build and release. Your new infrastructure is deployed to your test environment, and the whole process to get the new infrastructure deployed took minutes while you only changed a definition file and you did not touch the infrastructure itself.

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VSTS Task to create a SAS Token

The Create SAS Token task creates a SAS Token which can be used to access a private Azure Storage Container. The task also gets the StorageUri. Both variables can be used in subsequent tasks, like the Azure Resource Group Deployment task. This is the first task of the Infrastructure as Code serie.

Create an Azure Service Principal and a VSTS ARM Endpoint

25-8-2016: Update because the UI to create a Service in VSTS changed

When you want to access Azure from VSTS there are multiple possibilities. It’s for example possible in VSTS to configure an Azure Classic Endpoint and after that configure the endpoint with credentials or with a certificate. The ARM way is to add an Azure Resource Manager Endpoint. To configure this you will need the settings of an Azure Service Principal. This blogpost tells you how to create both the Service Principal in Azure and the ARM Endpoint in VSTS.

VSTS Task to deploy AppSettings and ConnectionStrings to an Azure WebApp

The Azure WebApp Configuration task reads VSTS variables and adds those as AppSettings and ConnectionStrings to an Azure WebApp. The task also supports Slot Settings. The task can be linked to a web.config to validate if all AppSettings and ConnectionStrings in the web.config exists as VSTS variable.