How to create Azure Container Registry using Terraform in Azure Cloud | Setup Azure Container Registry using Terraform

Hashicorp's Terraform is an open-source tool for provisioning and managing cloud infrastructure. Terraform can provision resources on any cloud platform. 

Terraform allows you to create infrastructure in configuration files(tf files) that describe the topology of cloud resources. These resources include virtual machines, storage accounts, and networking interfaces. The Terraform CLI provides a simple mechanism to deploy and version the configuration files to Azure.

Watch the steps in YouTube:

Advantages of using Terraform:

• Reduce manual human errors while deploying and managing infrastructure.
• Deploys the same template multiple times to create identical development, test, and production environments.
• Reduces the cost of development and test environments by creating them on-demand.

How to Authenticate with Azure?

Terraform can authenticate with Azure in many ways, in this example we will use Azure CLI to authenticate with Azure and then we will create resources using Terraform.

Pre-requisites:

Azure CLI needs to be installed.

Terraform needs to be installed.

Logging into the Azure CLI

Login to the Azure CLI using:

az login

The above command will open the browser and will ask your Microsoft account details. Once you logged in, you can see the account info by executing below command:

az account list

Now create a directory to store Terraform files.

mkdir tf-acr

cd tf-acr

Let's create a terraform file to use azure provider. To configure Terraform to use the Default Subscription defined in the Azure CLI, use the below cod.

Now initialize the working directory

sudo vi create-acr.tf

provider "azurerm" {
  features {}
}
resource "azurerm_resource_group" "rg" {
  name     = "rg-tf-acr"
  location = "southcentralus"
}
resource "azurerm_container_registry" "acr" {
  name                     = "azcontainerregistry321"
  resource_group_name      = azurerm_resource_group.rg.name
  location                 = azurerm_resource_group.rg.location
  sku                      = "Basic"
  admin_enabled            = true
}
output "admin_password" {
  value       = azurerm_container_registry.acr.admin_password
  description = "The object ID of the user"
sensitive = true
}

Perform the below command to initialize the directory.

terraform init

Once directory is initialized, you can start writing code for setting up the infrastructure. Now Perform the below command to validate terraform files.

terraform validate

perform plan command to see how many resources will be created.

terraform plan

terraform apply

Do you want to perform these actions?

type yes 

Now Login into Azure Cloud to see the resources created.

How to destroy the resources ?

Execute terraform destroy

The above command to destroy both resource group and container registry created before.

How to upload Docker images to Azure Container Registry - Hosting Docker images in Azure Container Registry

Azure Container Registry is a managed, private docker registry service. You can create and maintain Azure container registries to store and manage your private Docker container images.

It is alternative to Docker Hub. Azure Container Registry allows you to build, store, and manage container images and artifacts in a private registry for all types of container deployments.

Let us see how to upload a docker images from your VM into ACR.

Pre-requistes:

Make sure you have docker installed on your VM.
 

Step 1 - Create Azure Container Registry (ACR)

Go to https://portal.azure.com/
Create a Resource, Give container registry as a name

Click on Create

  

Enter values as mentioned below:

Give registry name, resource group and choose Enable admin user and SKU as Basic 

 Click on Review and then create, now your container registry is been created.

Step 2 - Download sample Python App

Go to your machine where you have docker images stored. perform below command to download sample pythonapp which is already dockerized.

 

git clone https://bitbucket.org/ananthkannan/mydockerrepo/src/master/pythonApp/ 

cd  pythonApp

docker build . -t mypythonapp

type below command:

sudo docker images

this should show docker images you have created locally.

Now go to ACR, click on docker registry you created. Click on access keys under Settings.

Copy value under login server 

Step 3 - Upload your docker images to ACR

Login to Azure Container Registry through command line.

sudo docker login mydockerazureregistry.azurecr.io

Username: mydockerazureregistry

Enter password by copying value below password

Now tag the docker image per as below:

sudo docker tag mypythonapp mydockerazureregistry.azurecr.io/mypythonapp

sudo docker push mydockerazureregistry.azurecr.io/mypythonapp

That's it..Docker image is pushed into ACR. You can see it under Services--> repositories