In this chapter, we started asking why and when we should use automation in Azure. Later on, we added questions regarding using the images offered by Azure.

With these questions in mind, we explored the options for automating our deployments:

• Scripting
• ARM templates
• Vagrant
• Packer
• Building and using your own images

Vagrant and Packer are examples of third-party solutions that are very popular tools that make it possible to easily create and recreate environments as an important part of your development process.

It's important to know that all the techniques described in this chapter can be combined into a complete solution. For instance, you can use cloud-init together with ARM, but also with Vagrant.

Automation and orchestration are closely related. In this chapter, we covered automation, especially as a part of development environments, to automate the deployment of VMs. Automation is often a difficult solution to maintain your...