Farmer: Simpler ARM deployments with Octopus Deploy

Mark Harrison's blog post explores the use of Farmer, an open-source .NET domain-specific language (DSL), to streamline the process of generating and deploying Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates. Harrison highlights the challenges of using traditional ARM templates, such as the reliance on strings and susceptibility to human error, and introduces F#'s type-safety as a solution. By leveraging Farmer, developers can create strongly-typed, concise ARM templates and deploy them using tools like Octopus Deploy. Harrison details the steps to create a Farmer template, including setting up a .NET Core application, defining Azure resources, and incorporating authentication with Azure. The post concludes with a demonstration of packaging and deploying the application using Octopus, emphasizing the benefits of version control and eliminating manual JSON editing.