This is not only the most calming and enjoyable terraform vs. bicep video on youtube but the most calming and enjoyable terraform vs. bicep video possible. I have certainly fallen into the trap of having to fill gaps in terraform before and it is no fun. I'd be interested to see your take on Pulumi with this mix.

Brilliant comparison... Thanks for your efforts 👍

Awesome Work ! I just went through 20 videos to understand the topic but this is the one which gives the best comparisons considering all aspect for an Ops/DevOps.

It was a very good comparison. I think the limits of the bicep are the same as the limits of the ARM Template at this time. The ARM Template philosophy is a declarative resource definition, but it requires help such as az CLI due to missing features. This is also the limit of the bicep. In comparison, the Terraform team seems to be making practical tools by actively filling in the gaps. I love bicep because that is a natively use Azure RM. I think Terraform is too much layering for azure resource provisioning tools.

Loved it!

Awesome video. I've just ported a jumpbox environment from terraform to bicep to learn bicep. Got to say, I like Bicep. No more remote state to worry about (yay!), no more waiting for a feature to be implemented in terraform. The Bicep documentation could be improved thus it was a bit of a struggle to get some of the final pieces working (e.g. AD Linux Login extension) but got there in the end. Just watched your video after finishing and learned a few things! Thank you! :-)

1. The "API Version" exists in the Azurerm Provider in TF which i think it better then adding apiversion as a property inside the resource group in bicep. This will cause some chaos in using services using different api versions that weren't necessarily tested in that combination. 2. Bicep takes SOOO much from terraform that i dont understand why they even continue abstracting ARM instead of completely ditching it and going over a better solution (Terraform and pulumi- which has TF underneath as well). I don't like "tool-locking" but i rather use same tool and concepts for multi cloud then learn 5 different ways to provision per cloud provider 3. TF is still better when you have a need to run on multiple cloud accounts. 4. Lack of state file means were still not solving state drift , even tough MS had that built-in into DSC for example. 5. Bicep and ARM still do not use immutable resources concept. 6. Terraform supports adding ARM templates for those preview/new resources,. Not the cleanest way but allows to use the service in the mean time if you cant wait for the resource to be added to the provider. 7. The AzureRM provider has new updates like at least once a week but you are correct in the fact that you rely on other to add the implementation but if that bothers you that a service you want to use, doesn't get the "desired focus", its a great reason to contribute yourself and return some thing to the community. 8. The issue with Role Assignments is that its the subtle border between infra provisioning and config management. Originally they always say to use the right tool for the right job. Its one of the reasons Hashi are removing the provisioners from 0.15 towards 1.0. Which means you have to involve task form your cicd pipeline or helper files as in your example. 9. The what-if is one of the best solutions that bicep has and terraform doesnt have and should focus on imho. As Unit testing when you deal with IAC is almost non existing and requires a sandbox deployment for testing. This can be aided by infra testing via powershell using poster or via python, but still requires a live deployment to start a test. I have abandoned ARM ages ago and moved to Terraform and recently even ventured into pulumi after their 2.0 version introduced native support for Azure API so all new/preview services that are introduced are supported on day 0. Yes terraform have given me some gray hair before and some frustration but overall i still think anyone that works with any cloud provider should aim for a solution like terraform instead of the native cloud tools . Adding an abstraction layer on top, just goes to show you how poor solution ARM is now days, but since they have major, well-paying enterprise customers invested in ARM they don't want to replace it with something else so they come up with ways to make it "easier" to digest. Problem is that the same IT peopl (inc. management) that complained so much about how hard it was to work with ARM over the years, instead of getting out of their narrow box and mind view and adopting new tools, will not all of the sudden embrace bicep just because it "builds" into an artifact, as they still have to learn how to use "code" for this. If they had the will to learn how to code, they would have moved to terraform ages ago. IF they come from full software background they might even jump over Terraform directly to pulumi as that is a REAL Infra-structure-as-code, while TF has mostly been Infrastructure-text or as-config. With TF 0.12+ it started looking like code but its still not there .

As someone quite new to all this. From what I can gather from your very nice presentation, Terraform still looks the best choice. While Bicep will add more functionality, at the same time Terraform will not be stagnant and will improve as well. True, any new feature added in Azure may not be immediately available in Terraform, but its cross cloud/platform support is crucial to someone who supports both Azure and GCP. Love to hear your response - Thanks

Great video Jon, but has the team thought about using terraform files and language to generate the arm template? It seems that most people like the way terraform works but want the zero day functionality of bicep. Without the mess of managing state of course.

Bicep... ARM template... didn't make that connection until now.

This is great. Bicep is Azure specific whereas Terraform is cloud provider agnostic (so for me Terraform is better to learn!).

I think you can get the resource properties you need check the code again

Probably worth removing background music or lower volume of it. It seems to be the same level and speech

Wow i found gilfoyle

terraform, I want to avoid vendor lock in

This looked so interesting but the music was too distracting so had to give up and give it a thumbs down. Can you release this video without the music?