Getting Started with Azure Verified Modules: Accelerate Your Bicep Deployments

If you’ve spent time writing Bicep templates from scratch, you know the effort involved in creating production-ready, well-architected infrastructure code. Azure Verified Modules (AVM) changes the game by providing Microsoft-maintained, community-supported modules that follow best practices out of the box.

What Are Azure Verified Modules?

Azure Verified Modules are a collection of pre-built Bicep (and Terraform) modules hosted in the official Bicep Registry. These modules are:

  • Production-ready with enterprise-grade defaults
  • Well-Architected Framework aligned for reliability, security, and performance
  • Consistently structured with standardised interfaces
  • Community-supported with regular updates and contributions

Why Should You Care?

Key benefits:

  • Reduced development time by leveraging pre-built, tested modules
  • Consistent deployments across your organisation
  • Built-in best practices without needing to research every resource type
  • Simplified maintenance as modules are updated centrally
  • WAF-aligned defaults ensuring your infrastructure meets Microsoft’s recommendations

Getting Started: Your First AVM Deployment

Using AVM modules is straightforward. Here’s a simple example deploying a Storage Account:

module storageAccount 'br/public:avm/res/storage/storage-account:0.31.0' = {
  name: 'storageAccountDeployment'
  params: {
    name: 'mystorageaccount001'
    location: location
    skuName: 'Standard_LRS'
    kind: 'StorageV2'
  }
}

Key AVM categories:

  • Resource modules (res) - Deploy individual Azure resources
  • Pattern modules (ptn) - Deploy complete architectures and solutions
  • Utility modules (utl) - Provide reusable types and helper functions

Here are some modules I frequently recommend to clients:

Module Purpose
avm/res/key-vault/vault Deploy Key Vaults with best-practice security
avm/res/network/virtual-network Create VNets with proper subnet configurations
avm/ptn/lz/sub-vending Automate Landing Zone subscription creation
avm/ptn/network/hub-networking Deploy multi-region hub networks
avm/res/container-service/managed-cluster Production-ready AKS clusters

Best Practices When Using AVM

Implementation strategies:

  • Pin your versions to ensure reproducible deployments
  • Review module parameters to understand available configuration options
  • Start with defaults then customise based on requirements
  • Use pattern modules for complete solutions rather than building from scratch
  • Contribute back if you find improvements or issues

Landing Zone Integration

AVM includes several modules specifically designed for Azure Landing Zone deployments:

  • Subscription Vending (avm/ptn/lz/sub-vending) automates the creation of new subscriptions with proper configuration
  • Hub Networking (avm/ptn/network/hub-networking) simplifies multi-region hub-spoke topologies
  • Private Link DNS Zones (avm/ptn/network/private-link-private-dns-zones) manages DNS for Private Endpoints

These modules align perfectly with the Cloud Adoption Framework, making enterprise-scale deployments significantly easier.

Conclusion

Azure Verified Modules represent a significant step forward in Infrastructure as Code maturity. By leveraging these production-ready modules, you can focus on what matters—delivering business value—rather than reinventing deployment patterns.

At Tech Design Concept, we help organisations adopt Infrastructure as Code practices using AVM and other modern tooling. If you’re looking to accelerate your Azure deployments, contact us to discuss how we can help.

Interested in learning more about Bicep and AVM? Follow our blog for upcoming deep-dives into specific module implementations.