Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
206 lines (170 loc) · 7.66 KB

resource-manager-export-template-cli.md

File metadata and controls

206 lines (170 loc) · 7.66 KB
title description services documentationcenter author manager editor ms.service ms.devlang ms.topic ms.tgt_pltfrm ms.workload ms.date ms.author
Export Resource Manager template with Azure CLI | Microsoft Docs
Use Azure Resource Manager and Azure CLI to export a template from a resource group.
azure-resource-manager
na
tfitzmac
timlt
tysonn
azure-resource-manager
azurecli
conceptual
na
na
02/23/2018
tomfitz

Export Azure Resource Manager templates with Azure CLI

Resource Manager enables you to export a Resource Manager template from existing resources in your subscription. You can use that generated template to learn about the template syntax or to automate the redeployment of your solution as needed.

It's important to note that there are two different ways to export a template:

  • You can export the actual template used for a deployment. The exported template includes all the parameters and variables exactly as they appeared in the original template. This approach is helpful when you need to retrieve a template.
  • You can export a generated template that represents the current state of the resource group. The exported template is not based on any template that you used for deployment. Instead, it creates a template that is a "snapshot" or "backup" of the resource group. The exported template has many hard-coded values and probably not as many parameters as you would typically define. Use this option to redeploy resources to the same resource group. To use this template for another resource group, you may have to significantly modify it.

This article shows both approaches.

Deploy a solution

To illustrate both approaches for exporting a template, let's start by deploying a solution to your subscription. If you already have a resource group in your subscription that you want to export, you do not have to deploy this solution. However, the rest of this article refers to the template for this solution. The example script deploys a storage account.

az group create --name ExampleGroup --location "Central US"
az group deployment create \
    --name NewStorage \
    --resource-group ExampleGroup \
    --template-uri "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/azure-quickstart-templates/master/101-storage-account-create/azuredeploy.json" \

Save template from deployment history

You can retrieve a template from your deployment history by using the az group deployment export command. The following example saves the template that you previously deploy:

az group deployment export --name NewStorage --resource-group ExampleGroup

It returns the template. Copy the JSON, and save as a file. Notice that it's the exact template you used for deployment. The parameters and variables match the template from GitHub. You can redeploy this template.

Export resource group as template

Instead of retrieving a template from the deployment history, you can retrieve a template that represents the current state of a resource group by using the az group export command. You use this command when you have made many changes to your resource group and no existing template represents all the changes. It is intended as a snapshot of the resource group, which you can use to redeploy to the same resource group. To use the exported template for other solutions, you must significantly modify it.

az group export --name ExampleGroup

It returns the template. Copy the JSON, and save as a file. Notice that it's different than the template in GitHub. The template has different parameters and no variables. The storage SKU and location are hard-coded to values. The following example shows the exported template, but your template has a slightly different parameter name:

{
  "parameters": {
    "storageAccounts_mcyzaljiv7qncstandardsa_name": {
      "type": "String",
      "defaultValue": null
    }
  },
  "variables": {},
  "$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2015-01-01/deploymentTemplate.json#",
  "resources": [
    {
      "tags": {},
      "dependsOn": [],
      "apiVersion": "2016-01-01",
      "sku": {
        "name": "Standard_LRS",
        "tier": "Standard"
      },
      "kind": "Storage",
      "type": "Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts",
      "location": "centralus",
      "name": "[parameters('storageAccounts_mcyzaljiv7qncstandardsa_name')]",
      "properties": {}
    }
  ],
  "contentVersion": "1.0.0.0"
}

You can redeploy this template, but it requires guessing a unique name for the storage account. The name of your parameter is slightly different.

az group deployment create --name NewStorage --resource-group ExampleGroup \
  --template-file examplegroup.json \
  --parameters "{\"storageAccounts_mcyzaljiv7qncstandardsa_name\":{\"value\":\"tfstore0501\"}}"

Customize exported template

You can modify this template to make it easier to use and more flexible. To allow for more locations, change the location property to use the same location as the resource group:

"location": "[resourceGroup().location]",

To avoid having to guess a uniques name for storage account, remove the parameter for the storage account name. Add a parameter for a storage name suffix, and a storage SKU:

"parameters": {
    "storageSuffix": {
      "type": "string",
      "defaultValue": "standardsa"
    },
    "storageAccountType": {
      "defaultValue": "Standard_LRS",
      "allowedValues": [
        "Standard_LRS",
        "Standard_GRS",
        "Standard_ZRS"
      ],
      "type": "string",
      "metadata": {
        "description": "Storage Account type"
      }
    }
},

Add a variable that constructs the storage account name with the uniqueString function:

"variables": {
    "storageAccountName": "[concat(uniquestring(resourceGroup().id), 'standardsa')]"
  },

Set the name of the storage account to the variable:

"name": "[variables('storageAccountName')]",

Set the SKU to the parameter:

"sku": {
    "name": "[parameters('storageAccountType')]",
    "tier": "Standard"
},

Your template now looks like:

{
  "$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2015-01-01/deploymentTemplate.json#",
  "contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",
  "parameters": {
    "storageSuffix": {
      "type": "string",
      "defaultValue": "standardsa"
    },
    "storageAccountType": {
      "defaultValue": "Standard_LRS",
      "allowedValues": [
        "Standard_LRS",
        "Standard_GRS",
        "Standard_ZRS"
      ],
      "type": "string",
      "metadata": {
        "description": "Storage Account type"
      }
    }
  },
  "variables": {
    "storageAccountName": "[concat(uniquestring(resourceGroup().id), parameters('storageSuffix'))]"
  },
  "resources": [
    {
      "type": "Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts",
      "sku": {
        "name": "[parameters('storageAccountType')]",
        "tier": "Standard"
      },
      "kind": "Storage",
      "name": "[variables('storageAccountName')]",
      "apiVersion": "2016-01-01",
      "location": "[resourceGroup().location]",
      "tags": {},
      "properties": {},
      "dependsOn": []
    }
  ]
}

Redeploy the modified template.

Next steps