Using Aztfy to import existing Azure resources into Terraform

Wanting to import existing Azure resources into Terraform? A recently announced tool called Terrafy will be something you will be certainly interested in! In this blog, I will have a look at using Aztfy and its configuration to both import Azure resources into terraform state locally and also directly to an Azure Storage Account.

“A tool to bring your existing Azure resources under the management of Terraform.”

Azure Terrafy imports the resources that are supported by the Terraform AzureRM provider within a resource group, into the Terraform state, and generates the corresponding Terraform configuration. Both the Terraform state and configuration are expected to be consistent with the resources’ remote state, i.e., terraform plan shows no diff. The user then is able to use Terraform to manage these resources.

https://github.com/Azure/aztfy

Installing Aztfy

Full install instructions found here

For my self, I used brew:

 brew install aztfy

The state I want to import in this example will be from resource group: storage_account_azcopy.

Using Aztfy

I will be using Aztfy in non-interactive mode, further reference here to interactive v non-interactive.

Running Aztfy is very simple, you just pass in the resource group you want to import terraform state:

aztfy rg --non-interactive storage_account_azcopy

You will then see cli output that it is performing an import of (0/28) resources for example:

  (20/28) Importing https://tamopssadestination.file.core.windows.net/fileshare as azurerm_storage_share.r

Once completed, running a terraform state list to see what has been imported:

thomast@MGH97DTW40 test % terraform state list
azurerm_linux_virtual_machine.res-1
azurerm_network_interface.res-2
azurerm_network_interface_security_group_association.res-3
azurerm_network_security_group.res-4
azurerm_network_security_rule.res-5
azurerm_public_ip.res-6
azurerm_resource_group.res-0
azurerm_storage_account.res-22
azurerm_storage_account.res-9
azurerm_storage_container.res-11
azurerm_storage_container.res-12
azurerm_storage_container.res-13
azurerm_storage_container.res-14
azurerm_storage_container.res-15
azurerm_storage_container.res-16
azurerm_storage_container.res-24
azurerm_storage_share.res-18
azurerm_storage_share.res-19
azurerm_subnet.res-8
azurerm_virtual_network.res-7

With the folder you run the command Aztfy in, it will store a number of required terraform files to plan/apply this terraform in the future along with the required terraform.tfstate file – awesome!

Reviewing main.tf you will notice all available (those Azure resources that have a terraform resource available) will be displayed, those who know me, know I write alot of Terraform – it is a good foundation for your automation. Nothing complex is considered in terms of Terraform modules, variables file etc but it is a good introduction and start. 🙂

For example, here is the virtual network & subnet shown in the initial resource group, with the Terraform created using Aztfy.

resource "azurerm_virtual_network" "res-7" {
  address_space       = ["10.1.0.0/16"]
  location            = "uksouth"
  name                = "storage_account_azcopy-vnet"
  resource_group_name = "storage_account_azcopy"
  depends_on = [
    azurerm_resource_group.res-0,
  ]
}
resource "azurerm_subnet" "res-8" {
  address_prefixes     = ["10.1.0.0/24"]
  name                 = "default"
  resource_group_name  = "storage_account_azcopy"
  virtual_network_name = "storage_account_azcopy-vnet"
  depends_on = [
    azurerm_virtual_network.res-7,
  ]
}

To finish, an even cooler feature is that the Aztfy terraform state file it creates can be stored remotely within an Azure Storage Account, example of this below!

aztfy rg --non-interactive --backend-type=azurerm `
--backend-config=resource_group_name=storage_account_azcopy `
--backend-config=storage_account_name=tamopssadestination `
--backend-config=container_name=tfstate `
--backend-config=key=terraform.tfstate `
storage_account_azcopy

A few thoughts from using Aztfy:

• Great basic tool for importing your Azure resources into Terraform
• Only works currently with a specific Azure resource or resource group
• The main.tf file it creates is a great start to having your resources in Terraform automation, for something more granular such as a Terraform module, you will have to create this – though a great start
• Further limitations noted by Aztfy

A definite tool to watch, only released a few months ago – it has already received several incremental versions! I look forward to hearing more about this tool in the future – possibly another blog post with new features 🙂