Linux VM Provisioning with Terraform

Quickly create a single Linux VM in Azure, with sane and secure defaults

Requirements

• Terraform
• Azure Subscription

Setup and Configuration

Ensure that you have Terraform installed. If you don't, you can reference the official Terraform documentation on installing...

which terraform

The Azure provider in Terraform requires the following environment variables defined...

• ARM_SUBSCRIPTION_ID
• ARM_TENANT_ID
• ARM_CLIENT_SECRET
• ARM_CLIENT_ID

Follow the instructions here on how to create application credentials required for the above variables.

Provisioning

There are two ways to use this to provision...

1. Clone to git repository and run the module directly
2. Create a new Terraform module that sources this remote module

Source this remote module

This is approach #2 from above. You can create a base module locally to source this module...

module "azlinuxvm" {
  source = "github.com/tstringer/terraform-azure-linux-vm"

  name_prefix    = "myprefix"
  hostname       = "myhostname"
  ssh_public_key = "${file("/home/yourlocaluser/.ssh/id_rsa.pub")}"
}

Then run terraform get to pull this module, and terraform plan to see what will happen, and lastly terraform apply to kick off the provisioning.

Run module directly

Clone this repository...

$ git clone https://github.com/tstringer/terraform-azure-linux-vm.git

Navigate your terminal to this module's root directory. It's wise to first see what Terraform will do in your subscription...

terraform plan -var "name_prefix=linux" -var "hostname=linux$(echo $RANDOM)" -var "ssh_public_key=$(cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)"

If you are satisfied, then start the provisioning process...

terraform apply -var "name_prefix=linux" -var "hostname=linux$(echo $RANDOM)" -var "ssh_public_key=$(cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)"

💡 As you can see here, there are three required variables (and only three):

• name_prefix (what to prefix your Azure resources with)
• hostname (this will be the public DNS name, recommended to randomize it to prevent likeliness of collisions)
• ssh_public_key (your public key). To see optional variables and their defaults, take a look at vars.tf

Output

After you run this Terraform module, there will be two outputs: admin_username and vm_fqdn. These two pieces are what you need to then immediately ssh into your new Linux machine.