Making Your Existing ARM Templates Reusable Using Parameters and Functions

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Making Your Existing ARM Templates Reusable Using Parameters and Functions

In this lab, we will practice making an existing ARM template more reusable so that it can be deployed to multiple environments. We will do this by replacing some of the hardcoded elements with functions and adding parameters, along with a parameters file.

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Lab Info

Level

Intermediate

Last updated

Sep 21, 2025

Duration

45m

Challenge

Add Parameters
- Grab the initialdeploy.json file to be edited from this provided GitHub repository.
- Add parameters in the ARM template deployment file for the following:
  
  VM Username
  
  VM Password
  
  VM Environment (dev or prod)
Challenge

Add Functions
- Add a function so the VM will be deployed to the resource group location automatically.
- Add a function to create a unique name for the VM based on the resource group ID.
- Create a function to determine if the environment is dev or prod, and to change the size of the VM accordingly:
  
  Dev: Standard_DS1_v2
  
  Prod: Standard_D2s_v3
Challenge

Add the Parameters File and Deploy
- Create a parameters file for the parameter values.
- Deploy the template with the parameters file.

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