Before you can create a template, some planning tasks are required:

• What are the types of resources to be provided?
• What are the locations of resources?
• What is the version of the resource provider API used to deploy resources?
• Must some resources be provided for other resources?
• What values should be passed during the deployment, and what values would you define directly in the template?
• Do you need to return values from the deployment?

Once you have answered these questions, you can get started. Ok, at least theoretically, you can start. Before you can start, we should clarify the software requirements.

Because a JSON data file is an XML-based text file, you really need only a simple text editor (for example, Notepad). We recommend you still use Visual Studio (with an excellent JSON editor). To prevent unnecessary expense, the Visual Studio Community edition is sufficient for our purposes completely.

There is still an alternative available - Azure Resource Manager Template Visualizer (ArmViz). With ArmViz, you can create templates with purely graphic means. ArmViz has one weakness, however - it is a preview and only available outside the platform.

Let's take a look at it: