Azure Demo Environment

The Azure Demo Environment, aka ADE, is a series of PowerShell Scripts, CLI Script, and Bicep ARM Templates that automatically generates an environment of Azure Resources and Services to an Azure Subscription. While not every Azure Service is deployed as a part of ADE, it does showcase many of the common, and more often complex, scenarios withing Azure, and it can be used as an example when designing a solution. The Azure Demo Environment is built to be deployed, deallocated, allocated, removed, and re-deployed. The deployment and removal processes take approximate two hours. The Azure Demo Environment is an Open Source Project. Contributions are welcome and encouraged – please visit our GitHub Issues or Product Backlog to learn more!

Prerequisites

To deploy and manage the Azure Demo Environment, the following services and software must be setup and configured.

Azure Subscription

• An Azure Subscription is required to deploy the Azure Demo Environment. ADE supports Pay-As-You-Go, Enterprise, and MSDN/Visual Studio Subscriptions. The resources in ADE do incur charges, but many resources can be deallocated to save on costs.

  • For MSDN Subscriptions or other Subscriptions that have more restrictive resource quotas, open a support ticket and request a quota increase for the following resources:

    • Public IP Addresses (10 - 20)

  Note: At this time, the Azure Demo Environment is configured to deploy to East US (Primary Region), East US 2, and West US (Secondary Region). In a future update, other regions will be supported.

Software Installations

The only software prerequisite is a local installation of Docker. Prior to the deployment of ADE, ensure that Docker is running.

DNS

• The Azure Demo Environment utilizes Azure DNS for publicly accessible A records for access to Azure App Services. ADE creates an Azure Public DNS Zone based on the domain name entered at the time of deployment. It is assumed that the user has ownership and access to this custom domain. After the creation of the Azure Public DNS Zone, it is necessary to update the DNS Name Servers with the Domain Registrar as documented here:

  • Update Domain Registrar with Azure Name Servers.

    • To retrieve the Azure DNS Zone Name Servers using az, run the following command:

      az network dns zone show -g RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME -n DOMAIN_NAME --query nameServers

Certificate Services

• The Azure Demo Environment utilizes a Wildcard SSL Certificate to secure multiple services including App Services and Application Gateway. The Wildcard PFX must have a password set. There are multiple online services, such as Let's Encrypt, that provide free and low-cost SSL Certificates.

• Prior to deploying ADE, it is necessary to store the PFX Wildcard Certificate in a dedicated folder locally with the name wildcard.pfx.

Using the Azure Demo Environment

The Azure Demo Environment is designed to run within a Docker container. To start ADE, open a terminal and run the following command:

docker run \
  -it --rm --name ade \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:rw \
  -v /path/to/certificate/data/folder/yourcert.pfx:/opt/ade/data/wildcard.pfx \
  ghcr.io/azuredemoenvironment/ade/ade:latest

Note: replace /path/to/certificate/data/folder/yourcert.pfx with an absolute path to your wildcard certificate. E.g., in Windows, it would be like C:/Users/username/documents/certificates/yourcert.pfx, or on macOS it would be /users/username/Documents/certificates/yourcert.pfx.

You now have the ADE Shell Environment! The Azure Demo Environment is deployed via PowerShell, ARM Templates, and Azure CLI commands, all conveniently wrapped up in a few ADE Shell commands for your use. All of the commands can be run interactively, where you are prompted for values, or you can specify them as parameters to the command.

You are automatically prompted to login to both Azure and Docker Hub once first entering the container. If you need to login anytime after being in the ADE shell, you can use the login command to run the process again.

deploy Command

To deploy ADE, simply run the deploy command from the ADE shell. You will then be prompted for various parameters that will be used to customize the demo environment that is deployed into your subscription.

You can also pass the parameters through the command, for example:

deploy `
  -alias 'abcdef' `
  -email '[email protected]' `
  -rootDomainName "website.com" `
  -resourceUserName 'abcdef' `
  -resourcePassword 'SampleP@ssword123!' `
  -certificatePassword 'SampleP@ssword123!' `
  -localNetworkRange '192.168.0.0/24' `
  -skipConfirmation `
  -overwriteParameterFiles

deploy Command Parameters

deallocate Command

ADE consists of many different Azure services, some of which can be expensive to run long term. To help reduce spend, the deallocate command will spin resources down that are able to either be in a deallocated state (e.g. Virtual Machines) or a reduced sku/tier (e.g. AKS). This allows you to keep ADE deployed within your subscription, but with a lower burden of cost.

deallocate Command Parameters

allocate Command

After you've deallocated ADE, you can use the reallocate command to bring resources back to their original deployed state.

allocate Command Parameters

remove Command

When you no longer want ADE in your Azure subscription, the remove command will tear down the resources that were created. The default behavior will remove all resources, policies, service principals, and settings with the exception of Azure Key Vault, due to soft-delete restrictions.

remove Command Parameters

login Command

If you've had the ADE Shell Environment open for a substantial period of time and your Azure or Docker session has timed out, or if you'd like to login with another account or change your subscription, you can execute the login command to re-login and make subscription selection changes.