Microsoft announced the general availability of the Azure deployment environment at its Build 2023 developer conference, a new Azure service designed to give developers faster access to their cloud application infrastructure using project-based templates. Most importantly, the Microsoft website provides free access to the Azure deployment environment.
Microsoft says the new system is designed to help application developers connect to cloud services in a self-service manner so they can spend more time writing code.
Developers can access their environments quickly and easily with on-demand or automated deployments,” Microsoft said. If developers have ideas on how to improve their environment, they can edit and submit their own templates via pull requests to the Infrastructure as Code Template Repository — helping to promote best practices and InnerSource (internal open source) among their teams.”
Microsoft says this approach to cloud application development also helps reduce a significant amount of redundant work, due to the fact that administrators can set up Azure deployment environments using their own pre-approved templates, which will also help collaboration among application developers.
In addition, Microsoft has added support for Terraform infrastructure-as-code files in Azure deployment environments in Early Access, which application developers can now sign up for.
The service already supports Azure Resource Manager templates; adding Terraform support means customers using Terraform will be able to import their existing templates directly into their Azure deployment environments,” Microsoft said. “
Microsoft added that it plans to add support for other infrastructure-as-code formats, such as Pulumi and Ansible, but did not disclose exactly when this support will be added to Azure deployment environments.
