🚀 Get Started With Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC)

By Anatoly Mironov

Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) is a widely admired principle among many professionals I meet. Yet, getting started with IaC can feel daunting—especially when working with legacy systems or under tight deadlines.

This post offers a simple, step-by-step demo to help you ease into IaC. Even partial adoption is better than none, and I’ll show you how to get started without overcomplicating things.

🧪 Demo Setup

Here’s the environment I’m using:

  • One Azure Subscription (for simplicity)
  • Azure DevOps Project
  • One Azure Service Connection with Contributor access at the subscription level
  • Azure Pipelines
  • Azure CLI
  • Bicep
  • Azure Deployment Stacks

Yes, it’s very Azure-heavy—but the same principles apply to GitHub, GitLab, or other platforms.

NOTE: I assume you already have a service connection set up.

To make this guide as digestable as possible, I am assuming you already have a service connection set up.

Here is a simplified diagram of the target demo setup.

iac demo setup

🔧 Step 1: Create a New Pipeline

In your Azure DevOps project:

  1. Go to Pipelines and create a new one.
  2. Choose Azure Pipelines and leave the default settings.
  3. Click Save and Run.

It’s simple, yet powerful—there’s a lot happening behind the scenes to get your pipeline running.

🏗️ Step 2: Add Bicep and a Deployment Stack

Create a file infra/main.bicep with the following code to create a resource group:

Now update your azure-pipelines.yml to deploy this Bicep file using Azure CLI:

After committing and pushing, a new resource group should be created—success!

Tip: If your pipeline gets stuck, try running the Azure CLI commands locally to debug.

az stack sub create \
          --template-file ./infra/main.bicep \
          --name iac-demo-002 \
          --location westeurope \
          --action-on-unmanage deleteResources \
          --deny-settings-mode None

🌱 Step 3: Add Your First Environment – DEV

Let’s introduce environments: DEV, TEST, and PROD.

The environments will be automatically created when you refer to them in the pipeline.

Update your pipeline to include stages and a checkout step:

🧩 Step 4: Restructure with Templates

To follow the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) principle, move the repeated stage logic into a template file: pipelines/templates/deploy.yml:

With a template file, the main azure-pipelines.yml becomes lighter:

Commit and push your changes to Azure DevOps and see that it works.

🧪 Step 5: Parameterize Bicep

Now one step before we can add TEST and PROD is making sure everything is parameterized.

Add an environment parameter to infra/main.bicep:

Create a parameter file for DEV: infra/parameters/DEV.bicepparam:

Update the template to include parameters in pipelines/templates/deploy.yml:

--parameters ./infra/parameters/${{ parameters.environment }}.bicepparam

Try this out by pushing the changes to Azure DevOps.

🧪 Step 6: Add TEST and PROD

Now that we have parameterized everything, adding the TEST and PROD environments is really really simple.

Create two more parameter files:

infra/parameters/TEST.bicepparam:

infra/parameters/PROD.bicepparam:

Then add two more stages to your pipeline in azure-pipelines.yml:

Further steps

Althought not in scope, but consider taking it further. Try to:

  • Set up Approvals for environments
  • Add resources to the IaC
  • Deploy the apps (CI/CD)

🧼 Cleanup

Since we’re using Deployment Stacks, cleanup is easy:

Summary

This guide walks you through setting up IaC with Azure DevOps using Bicep and Deployment Stacks. Even a minimal setup can make a big difference. From here, consider adding:

  • Environment approvals
  • More resources
  • CI/CD for app deployment