Use Terraform to deploy a simple VM and a VNet to Azure

 I have had a look at deploying a simple VM that can be used for troubleshooting using Terraform. It is based on this Microsoft Quickstart guide. What I have done is to remove most of the resources from this file so it is only the minimum required resources that will be deployed. These are:

• A resource group
• A Windows 2022 Server
• A vNIC
• A public IP (so you can RDP to the box)

It requires that you already have a VNet and subnet running. Preferably, there is an NSG as well which is associated with the subnet which allows for port 3389 tcp inbound.

The files are here on Github in the Simple VM folder. There are some getting started instructions in the readme.md file as well. The four files in the folder are all part of the template, these are:

• main.tf
• outputs.tf
• providers.tf
• variables.tf

The template creates a random admin password and assigns it to the machine. The password itself can be read post deployment by running:

terraform output -json

In addition to this, I have also created a small template that creates a VNet and two subnets and place them in a separate resource group. Files are located here.

I personally prefer to start with smaller building blocks and then combine those later when required.