🌍 Two VMs, One Script: Terraform Azure Deployment in Real-Time!

Provisioning infrastructure manually via the Azure portal is time-consuming, error-prone, and not scalable for production environments.

1. Problem Statement:

In a typical cloud-based infrastructure, virtual machines (VMs) are one of the most fundamental components. They serve as the backbone for hosting applications, running services, executing automated processes, or acting as test environments. However, manually creating and configuring these virtual machines using the Azure Portal can become inefficient, especially in environments that require frequent deployments, consistency across regions, or scale-out scenarios.

Let’s consider a DevOps team working on deploying a high-availability backend service. The team needs to provision two identical virtual machines in Azure:

• Both VMs must be placed within the same virtual network for inter-VM communication.

• They need to be launched with specific configurations such as size, region, admin credentials, and OS image.

• Network interfaces (NICs) need to be associated with each VM.

• The VMs should be created in an automated, repeatable manner that supports version control and minimizes human error.

Manual deployment through the Azure portal doesn’t fulfill the required standards of automation, scalability, and consistency. Also, updating or deleting resources in a manual setup becomes a risky and error-prone process.

This situation presents the need for a declarative, infrastructure-as-code (IaC) approach using Terraform.

By using Terraform, we aim to:

• Define the infrastructure in .tf files (Terraform configuration files).

• Automate the provisioning of the two Azure virtual machines.

• Reuse, scale, and maintain configurations via code stored in version control systems like Git.

• Achieve consistent environments across development, staging, and production.

The problem is not just about creating two VMs—it’s about introducing best practices of modern DevOps: codifying infrastructure, minimizing manual effort, and building scalable cloud environments.

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2. Why we need this use case

Provisioning infrastructure manually via the Azure portal is time-consuming, error-prone, and not scalable for production environments. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like Terraform provide a reliable and repeatable method to manage cloud infrastructure.

By defining the entire Azure environment in Terraform scripts, we can:

• Automate resource provisioning, reducing human error.

• Maintain version-controlled infrastructure.

• Ensure consistent deployments across environments (dev, staging, production).

• Enable collaboration through shared code in repositories.

• Integrate with CI/CD pipelines for seamless DevOps workflows.

Provisioning two virtual machines in Azure using Terraform is a foundational scenario in real-world projects—representing multi-tier architecture, load-balanced backends, high availability, or failover configurations.

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3. When we need this use case

This use case becomes essential in scenarios such as:

• Dev/Test Environments: Quickly spin up sandbox environments for developers or QA teams.

• CI/CD Integration: Automatically deploy or tear down test VMs as part of build pipelines.

• Training or Demo Setups: Set up two VMs to simulate distributed applications, load balancers, or backend services.

• Disaster Recovery: Maintain a backup VM that mirrors the primary instance.

• Load Balancing: Deploy multiple VMs to handle web traffic using Azure Load Balancer or Application Gateway.

• Repeatable Deployments: Use the same Terraform configuration to deploy VMs across regions or subscriptions.

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4. Challenge questions