An evening on Infrastructure as Code

By Maik van der Gaag January 31, 2023

This evening, we will be back with the first Dutch Cloud MeetUp of 2023! The theme for this evening will be Infrastructure as Code. In other words: We will have a showdown between Bicep and TerraForm! And, as this is in person, there will be a welcome with food and drinks, provided by our sponsor Brink Software.


18:00 - 18:45 : Dinner + Welcome

18:45 - 18:50 : Welcome

18:50 - 19:35 : 1st Session - Barbara Forbes: Infra as Code: Bicep for the enterprise

19:45 - 20:30 : 2nd Session - Erwin Staal: Landscaping your infrastructure garden: Terraform 101


Barbara Forbes

Barbara works as the Azure technical lead for OGD in the Netherlands. She is a Microsoft MVP Azure, MCT and GitHub Star. Her focus is on Azure and automation. Think Serverless, Azure DevOps, PowerShell, GitHub and Infrastructure as Code. She loves teaching in an approachable way. She regularly writes posts for her blog https://4bes.nl and speaks at conferences and user groups. She helps grow the community as co-owner of the Dutch DevOps & GitHub community (DDOG), as well as co-hosting the Dutch PowerShell User Group (DUPSUG).

Session: Infra as Code: Bicep for the enterprise

If you work with Azure, you will want to use infra as code. Maybe you have are familiar with ARM templates already. Have you heard of Bicep? It has a lot to offer when you use infra as code in an enterprise environment.

How do you make use of all the possibilities that are available to deploy your Azure infrastructure? We will consider a few of the great code solutions that Bicep has to offer and how VSCode can help you create templates. To see a real-life scenario, we take a look at how Bicep can be used to ensure the right mix between flexibility and usability. And to bring it together, let’s see how it fits into your CICD process. In the end, you will have the tools to start and the insights to take it all to the next level.


Erwin Staal

Erwin Staal is an Azure Architect and DevOps consultant working for Xpirit in the Netherlands. Helping companies deliver their software to customers using DevOps practices and cloud-native architectures is what he loves to do. He believes in the power of both the monolith and microservices and prefers to run his workload on the Azure Cloud and/or Kubernetes. Besides the work he does for the customers of Xpirit, he has a passion for sharing knowledge. He is one of the authors of ‘Azure Infrastructure as Code’ (https://www.manning.com/books/azure-infrastructure-as-code), occasionally writes a blog, and is an international speaker at conferences.

Session: Landscaping your infrastructure garden: Terraform 101

Landscaping is the art and craft of growing plants to create beauty within your garden. Don’t worry; you won’t get your hands dirty during this talk! However, we will discover how Terraform can help you create a perfectly crafted infrastructure landscape. We will cover the basics of Terraform, look at the language specifics, and cover what Terraform state is and how to store that securely. We will review the typical developer workflow, see the plan and apply commands in action. A pipeline will be put in place to automatically deploy infrastructure changes to your environments and ensure they are repeatable, reliable, and traceable. While most other Infrastructure as Code tools focus on a single cloud vendor, Terraform allows you to configure many more systems. You will see how Terraform can be used beyond cloud providers by, for example, also configuring your DNS provider or on-call system.


Location:

Brink Software

Groot Handelsgebouw

Stationsplein 45 unit A6.002

3013 AK Rotterdam