GitHub with Bicep

Follow these instructions to bootstrap GitHub ready to deploy your platform landing zone with Bicep.

1. Create a new folder on your local drive called accelerator.

2. Inside the accelerator create two folders called config and output. You’ll store your input file inside config and the output folder will be the place that the accelerator stores files while it works.

3. Inside the config folder create a new file called inputs.yaml. You can use json if you prefer, but our examples here are yaml.

   New-Item -ItemType "file" "~/accelerator/config/inputs.yaml" -Force
   New-Item -ItemType "directory" "~/accelerator/output"
   

4. Your folder structure should look like this:

   📂accelerator
   ┣ 📂config
   ┃ ┗ 📜inputs.yaml
   ┗ 📂output
   

5. Open your inputs.yaml file in Visual Studio Code (or your preferred editor) and copy the content from inputs-github.yaml into that file.

6. Check through the file and update each input as required. It is mandatory to update items with placeholders surrounded by angle brackets <>:

   The following inputs can also be supplied via environment variables. This may be useful for sensitive values you don’t wish to persist to a file. The Env Var Prefix denotes the prefix the environment variable should have. The environment variable is formatting is <PREFIX>_<variable_name>, e.g. $env:ALZ_iac_type = "terraform" or $env:TF_VAR_github_personal_access_token = "*****...".

   If you followed our phase 0 planning and decisions guidance, you should have these values already.

   Input	Env Var Prefix	Placeholder	Description
   iac_type	ALZ	bicep	This is the choice of bicep or terraform. Keep this as bicep for this example.
   bootstrap_module_name	ALZ	alz_github	This is the choice of Version Control System. Keep this as alz_github for this example.
   starter_module_name	ALZ	complete	This is the choice of [Starter Modules][wiki_starter_modules], which is the baseline configuration you want for your Azure landing zone. Keep this as complete for this example.
   bootstrap_location	TF_VAR	<region>	Replace <region> with the Azure region where you would like to deploy the bootstrap resources in Azure. This field expects the name of the region, such as uksouth. You can find a full list of names by running az account list-locations -o table.
   starter_locations	TF_VAR	[<region-1>,<region-2>]	Replace <region-1> and <region-2> with the Azure regions where you would like to deploy the starter module resources in Azure. This field expects the name of the regions in and array, such as ["uksouth", "ukwest"]. You can find a full list of names by running az account list-locations -o table.
   root_parent_management_group_id	TF_VAR	""	This is the id of the management group that will be the parent of the management group structure created by the accelerator. If you are using the Tenant Root Group management group, you leave this as an empty string "" or supply the tenant id.
   subscription_ids	TF_VAR	<management-subscription-id>, <identity-subscription-id>, <connectivity-subscription-id>, <security-subscription-id>	Replace <xxxxxxxxxxx-subscription-id> with the ids of the platform subscriptions you created in the previous phase.
   github_personal_access_token	TF_VAR	<token-1>	Replace <token-1> with the token-1 GitHub PAT you generated in a previous step.
   github_runners_personal_access_token	TF_VAR	<token-2>	Replace <token-2> with the token-2 GitHub PAT you generated in the previous step specifically for the self-hosted runners. This only applies if you have use_self_hosted_agents set to true. You can set this to an empty string "" if you are not using self-hosted runners.
   github_organization_name	TF_VAR	<github-organization>	Replace <github-organization> with the name of your GitHub organization. This is the section of the url after github.com. E.g. enter my-org for https://github.com/my-org.
   use_separate_repository_for_templates	TF_VAR	true	Determine whether to create a separate repository to store workflow templates as an extra layer of security. Set to false if you don’t wish to secure your workflow templates by using a separate repository. This will default to true.
   bootstrap_subscription_id	TF_VAR	""	Enter the id of the subscription in which you would like to deploy the bootstrap resources in Azure. If left blank, the subscription you are connected to via az login will be used. In most cases this is the management subscription, but you can specify a separate subscription if you prefer.
   service_name	TF_VAR	alz	This is used to build up the names of your Azure and GitHub resources, for example rg-<service_name>-mgmt-uksouth-001. We recommend using alz for this.
   environment_name	TF_VAR	mgmt	This is used to build up the names of your Azure and GitHub resources, for example rg-alz-<environment_name>-uksouth-001. We recommend using mgmt for this.
   postfix_number	TF_VAR	1	This is used to build up the names of your Azure and GitHub resources, for example rg-alz-mgmt-uksouth-<postfix_number>. We recommend using 1 for this.
   use_self_hosted_agents	TF_VAR	true	This controls if you want to deploy self-hosted agents. This will default to true.
   use_private_networking	TF_VAR	true	This controls whether private networking is deployed for your self-hosted agents and storage account. This only applies if you have use_self_hosted_agents set to true. This defaults to true.
   allow_storage_access_from_my_ip	TF_VAR	false	This is not relevant to Bicep and we’ll remove the need to specify it later, leave it set to false.
   apply_approvers	TF_VAR	<username-or-email-address>	This is a list of usernames or email addresses of people you wish to be in the group that approves apply of the Azure landing zone module. This is an array of strings like [“user1”, “user2”, “user3”] or [“abc@xyz.com”, “def@xyz.com”, “ghi@xyz.com”]. You may need to check what the username or email of each user is prior to filling this out as it can vary based on how they have setup their GitHub account. Using username is the preferred option since it has to be set, whereas email needs to be configured and must be public. Use empty array [] to disable approvals.
   create_branch_policies	TF_VAR	true	This controls whether to create branch policies for the repository. This defaults to true.

7. Now head over to your chosen starter module documentation to get the specific inputs for that module. Come back here when you are done.

   • Bicep Complete Starter Module

8. Verify that you are logged in to Azure CLI or have the Service Principal credentials set as env vars. You should have completed this in the Prerequisites phase.

9. Ensure you are running the latest version of the ALZ PowerShell module by running:

   Update-Module -Name ALZ
   

10. In your PowerShell Core (pwsh) terminal run the module:

    Deploy-Accelerator -inputs "~/accelerator/config/inputs.yaml" -output "~/accelerator/output"
    

11. You will see a Terraform init and apply happen.

12. There will be a pause after the plan phase to allow you to validate what is going to be deployed.

13. If you are happy with the plan, then hit enter.

14. The Terraform will apply and your environment will be bootstrapped.

15. You can now update your Azure Landing Zone Terraform Accelerator Runner Registration GitHub PAT (token-2) to restrict it to the main repository created by the bootstrap.

Now head to Phase 3.