Getting Started¶

Use this page before deploying any Practical Journey stage. It covers the local tools, Azure access, and environment variables that the journey's Bicep templates and driver scripts expect.

Prerequisites¶

Azure CLI installed and authenticated with az login.
Bicep available through Azure CLI.
An Azure subscription where your identity has at least Contributor rights on the target resource group or subscription scope.
A strong SQL_ADMIN_PASSWORD exported in your shell before any stage deployment.
For Stage 2 and later, these additional environment variables exported before deployment:
- SQL_ENTRA_ADMIN_LOGIN
- SQL_ENTRA_ADMIN_OBJECT_ID
- ALERT_EMAIL_ADDRESS

Azure subscription setup¶

Sign in and confirm the subscription that will hold the stage resources:

az login
az account show --output table
az account set --subscription <subscription-id-or-name>

Command	Purpose
`az login`	Starts interactive browser sign-in to Azure.
`az account show --output table`	Displays the currently active subscription as a formatted table.
`--output table`	Renders the output as a human-readable table instead of JSON.
`az account set --subscription <subscription-id-or-name>`	Selects the subscription that subsequent commands target.
`--subscription <subscription-id-or-name>`	Identifies the subscription to make active, by ID or display name.

If you are unsure whether you can deploy, confirm that your identity can create or update resource groups in the target subscription. The driver scripts call az group create, az deployment group create, az group show, and az group delete, so Contributor rights are the practical minimum.

Install and verify the CLI toolchain¶

Install or update Bicep through Azure CLI, then confirm both tools respond locally:

az bicep install
az bicep version
az version

Command	Purpose
`az bicep install`	Installs the Bicep CLI that Azure CLI uses to compile `.bicep` templates.
`az bicep version`	Prints the installed Bicep CLI version.
`az version`	Prints the Azure CLI core and installed component versions.

The Practical Journey scripts call az directly and the stage parameter files use Bicep features such as readEnvironmentVariable(...), so both Azure CLI and the Bicep CLI integration need to work before deployment.

Required environment variables¶

Export the SQL administrator password for every stage:

export SQL_ADMIN_PASSWORD='<choose-a-strong-password>'

From Stage 2 onward, export the Microsoft Entra administrator metadata for Azure SQL and the alert notification address as well:

export SQL_ENTRA_ADMIN_LOGIN='<entra-user-or-group-display-name>'
export SQL_ENTRA_ADMIN_OBJECT_ID='<entra-object-id>'
export ALERT_EMAIL_ADDRESS='<ops-notification-email>'

These values are consumed by the stage parameter files under infra/bicep/stages/stage-0N-*/main.bicepparam, which read them from the current shell environment.

Optional overrides¶

The stage env files under scripts/practical/stages/ provide defaults for the resource group, region, app base name, and SQL admin login. Override them only when you need a different naming or location choice:

export RG='rg-practical-storefront-stage03'
export LOCATION='koreacentral'
export APP_BASE_NAME='storefront'
export SQL_ADMIN_LOGIN='storefrontadmin'

Stage 5 also has a secondary region in its parameter file. If you need to change it, edit the stage parameter flow deliberately rather than assuming every stage shares the same regional topology.

Recommended first run¶

If this is your first pass through the journey:

Start with Stage 1 — MVP.
Use scripts/practical/deploy-stage.sh to deploy.
Run the verification flow immediately after deployment.
Tear the stage down before moving to the next one unless you intentionally need it to stay online.