CI/CD Deployment of an Azure Web App using Terraform and Azure DevOps.

#terraform #devops #webapp #azureappservice

Introduction

A simple guide to show how deploy an end-to-end DevOps workflow for deploying a web application to Microsoft Azure. Infrastructure is provisioned using Terraform, and application deployment is automated through Azure DevOps CI/CD pipelines.

The goal is to showcase Infrastructure as Code, pipeline automation, and cloud-native deployment using Azure App Service.

Concepts

Azure App Service: A fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling web apps and APIs. It supports multiple languages and frameworks, providing built-in infrastructure maintenance, security patching, and scaling capabilities.

Azure web app: An HTTP-based service for hosting web applications, REST APIs, and mobile back ends. It is a specific type of application hosted on the App Service platform.

Prerequisites

Azure subscription
Azure DevOps organization
Azure DevOps repository
Azure Service Connection with sufficient permissions
Terraform installed (v1.x)

Repository Azure Devops Structure

In this part, I have the next structure but you can configure another resource how you want.

AzureAppService/
├── index.html

└── azure-pipeline.yml

Step 1: Prepare Terraform configuration files

The following Terraform configuration provisions the Azure infrastructure required to host the web application.


terraform {
  required_providers {
    azurerm = {
      source  = "hashicorp/azurerm"
      version = "~> 3.0"
    }
  }
}

provider "azurerm" {
  features {}
}

resource "azurerm_resource_group" "main" {
  name     = "Hawkins"
  location = "West Europe"
}

resource "azurerm_app_service_plan" "main" {
  name                = "asp-devops-lab"
  location            = azurerm_resource_group.main.location
  resource_group_name = azurerm_resource_group.main.name
  sku {
    tier = "Free"
    size = "F1"
  }
}

resource "azurerm_app_service" "webapp" {
  name                = "webapp-devops-lab-2026"
  location            = azurerm_resource_group.main.location
  resource_group_name = azurerm_resource_group.main.name
  app_service_plan_id = azurerm_app_service_plan.main.id
}

Step 2: Terraform commands

Terraform init
Terraform plan
Terraform apply

Step 3: Create files for Azure DevOps

The pipeline packages the web application and deploys it to Azure App Service using an Azure Service Connection.


trigger:
  branches:
    include:
      - main

pool:
  vmImage: 'ubuntu-latest'

steps:
- task: ArchiveFiles@2
  inputs:
    rootFolderOrFile: '$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)'
    includeRootFolder: false
    archiveType: 'zip'
    archiveFile: '$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)/webapp.zip'
    replaceExistingArchive: true

- task: AzureWebApp@1
  inputs:
    azureSubscription: 'Thor-Service-Connection'
    appName: 'webapp-devops-lab-2026'
    package: '$(Build.ArtifactStagingDirectory)/webapp.zip'