I am testing Azure setup with terraform to automate VM instance provisioning using user data scritps. User data is a set of scripts or other metadata that’s inserted to an Azure virtual machine at provision time. It rans right after the OS has been installed and the server boots. I would typically use it to update the os, install tools and software I would need on the provisioned node using a shell script which is defined as a data_template like this:

data "template_file" "init-wp-server" {
  template = file("./init-wp-server.sh")
}

I tried to speficy the user data file the same way I used to do on AWS and I was getting the following error:

Error: expected "user_data" to be a base64 string, got #!/usr/bin/bash

This is because Azure requires the user data file to be Base64-Encoded. So instead of using this in azurerm_linux_virtual_machine definiton:

  user_data = data.template_file.init-wp-server.rendered

The following shoud be used:

  user_data = base64encode(data.template_file.init-wp-server.rendered)

I am testing creating resources with Terraform on Azure. I have tried to force one AZ per public ip and I ran the following code:

# Create public IPs
resource "azurerm_public_ip" "external_ip" {
  count               = length(var.wp_test_instance_location)
  name                = "external_ip-0${count.index}"
  location            = azurerm_resource_group.rg.location
  resource_group_name = azurerm_resource_group.rg.name
  allocation_method   = "Dynamic"
  zones               = tolist([var.wp_test_instance_location[count.index], ])
  tags = {
    environment = "test"
    terraform   = "Y"
  }
}

Then I ran into the following error message:

Error: creating/updating Public Ip Address: (Name "external_ip-01" / Resource Group "rg-bright-liger"): network.PublicIPAddressesClient#CreateOrUpdate: Failure sending request: StatusCode=400 -- Original Error: Code="ZonesNotAllowedInBasicSkuResource" Message="Request for resource /subscriptions/[MASKED]/resourceGroups/rg-bright-liger/providers/Microsoft.Network/publicIPAddresses/external_ip-01 is invalid as it is Basic sku and in an Availability Zone which is a deprecated configuration.  Please change your resource to Standard sku for Availability Zone support." Details=[]

The issue is that the SKU setting for the public IP has to be Standard instead of Basic ( which is the default and I didn’t set it before ). Also the allocation_method parmaters has to be changed from Dynamic to Static. The corrected code looks like:

# Create public IPs
resource "azurerm_public_ip" "external_ip" {
  count               = length(var.wp_test_instance_location)
  name                = "external_ip-0${count.index}"
  location            = azurerm_resource_group.rg.location
  resource_group_name = azurerm_resource_group.rg.name
  allocation_method   = "Static"
  zones               = tolist([var.wp_test_instance_location[count.index], ])
  sku                 = "Standard"
  tags = {
    environment = "test"
    terraform   = "Y"
  }
}