Prerequisites

To get started, ensure you have the following:

• An active Azure account, which you can create at no cost.
• Azure Bicep installed on your local machine.
• Azure PowerShell set up. For more details, refer to the Azure PowerShell installation guide.
• A resource group established in your Azure subscription.

Let's dive in!

Solution Overview

We will create a Bicep template that handles the following tasks:

1. Deploy an Azure virtual machine.
2. Establish a Log Analytics workspace.
3. Activate the Log Analytics virtual machine extension.

The solution will consist of these files:

• 📄 main.bicep: The main Bicep template.
• 📄 azuredeploy.parameters.json: This parameter file includes the values necessary for deploying your Bicep template.

Section 1.1: Creating the Azure Bicep Template

To begin, create a new file in your working directory named main.bicep. We will define the following parameters:

@description('Username for the Virtual Machine.')

param adminUsername string = 'localadmin'

@description('Password for the Virtual Machine.')

@minLength(12)

@secure()

param adminPassword string

@description('Unique DNS Name for the Public IP used to access the Virtual Machine.')

param dnsLabelPrefix string = toLower('${vmName}-${uniqueString(resourceGroup().id, vmName)}')

@description('Name for the Public IP used to access the Virtual Machine.')

param publicIpName string = 'myPublicIpAddress'

@description('Allocation method for the Public IP used to access the Virtual Machine.')

@allowed(['Dynamic', 'Static'])

param publicIPAllocationMethod string = 'Static'

@description('SKU for the Public IP used to access the Virtual Machine.')

@allowed(['Basic', 'Standard'])

param publicIpSku string = 'Standard'

@description('The Windows version for the VM. This will pick a fully patched image of this given Windows version.')

@allowed(['2016-Datacenter', '2022-datacenter', '2022-datacenter-azure-edition-core'])

param OSVersion string = '2022-datacenter-azure-edition-core'

@description('Size of the virtual machine.')

param vmSize string = 'Standard_D2s_v5'

@description('Location for all resources.')

param location string = 'eastus'

@description('Name of the virtual machine.')

param vmName string = 'myVM'

param logAnalyticsWorkspaceName string = 'la-${uniqueString(resourceGroup().id)}'

Section 1.2: Defining Variables in Azure Bicep

Next, we will establish the following variables:

var storageAccountName = 'bootdiags${uniqueString(resourceGroup().id)}'

var nicName = 'myVMNic'

var addressPrefix = '192.168.0.0/16'

var subnetName = 'mySubnet'

var subnetPrefix = '192.168.1.0/24'

var virtualNetworkName = 'myVnet'

var networkSecurityGroupName = 'myNetworkSecurityGroup'

var primaryKey = logAnalyticsWorkspace.listKeys().primarySharedKey

It’s important to note that we utilize the listKeys() function to obtain the primary key of the Log Analytics workspace, which is necessary for the correct configuration of the virtual machine extension.

Final Steps and Deployment

To conclude, create a new file called azuredeploy.parameters.json to define the parameters. Here’s a snippet of what it should contain:

{

"contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",

"parameters": {

"adminPassword": {

"value": "AzureTest01!!"

}

}

}

Sensitive information like the virtual machine password should not be hardcoded.

To deploy your Bicep template, use the command below:

az deployment group create --resource-group <your-resource-group> --template-file main.bicep --parameters azuredeploy.parameters.json

You can verify the deployment in the Azure Portal.

Source Code

You can access the complete code for this solution at the following GitHub repository:

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• Dave R