Azure

Managing infrastructure as code is a crucial practice in modern IT operations, and Terraform is a powerful tool to achieve this. In this blog post, we will walk through the process of pushing user data cloud config to an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS machine in Azure using Terraform. We’ll highlight the key components of the Terraform code and explain the templating mechanism used to inject user data.

Setting Up the Virtual Machine

We start by defining our Azure virtual machine using the azurerm_linux_virtual_machine resource. This resource is configured to deploy an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS machine.

Standalone Container Runtimes

Virtual Machine (VM)

Virtual Machines offer the greatest flexibility for running Docker containers, with many combinations of CPU and RAM configurations available. Both Windows and Linux VMs can host Docker, but VMs require significant maintenance and configuration. They are best suited for Dev/Test workloads due to their operational overhead.

Azure Container Instance (ACI)

Azure Container Instances provide a serverless container runtime where you simply provide the container and Azure runs it. ACI can handle both single and multiple instances, charging based on the number of vCPUs and GBs of memory used per second. This option is ideal for unpredictable burst workloads but can be challenging for cost prediction. ACI can also be integrated with Azure Kubernetes Service for hybrid workloads.