# Creating Automated Microsoft Bicep Application Infrastructure from GitHub in the Azure Cloud
## 1 Introduction
CI/CD practices automate the build, test, and deployment stages of application delivery, ensuring that changes are integrated frequently, thoroughly tested, and reliably deployed. GitHub Actions is a popular CI/CD platform that integrates seamlessly with GitHub repositories, offering flexible workflows, secure secret management, and strong community support. By combining GitHub Actions with Azure Bicep, teams can fully automate the deployment of cloud infrastructure and application code from source control, achieving consistent and secure deployments across multiple environments. This paper addresses the design and implementation of an automated deployment pipeline for an application hosted in the Azure cloud. The solution utilizes Azure Bicep to define the required infrastructure and GitHub Actions to automate the deployment process. The targeted infrastructure includes a virtual network with private subnets, an Azure Container App hosting the application, Azure Database for PostgreSQL with delegated networking, Azure Cognitive Search, Managed Identities for secure access control, and supporting resources such as Private DNS Zones. The design emphasizes security best practices, such as using private endpoints to restrict access to Azure services and managing secrets via GitHub repository secrets [5]. A key goal of this solution is to support multiple deployment environments--Development, QA, and Production--with a single codebase and parameterized configurations. By adopting a modular Bicep approach, the infrastructure is split into smaller, reusable components that can be composed flexibly. Parameter files enable environment-specific customization, such as different networking configurations, database credentials, or service capacities. This approach aligns with industry best practices for multi-environment deployments, ensuring consistent architecture while allowing environment-specific tuning. To orchestrate deployments, the solution includes GitHub Actions workflows for both deployment and infrastructure teardown. The deployment workflow supports selective targeting of Azure Container Registry (ACR) resources, the infrastructure resources defined in Bicep, or both. It ensures that required resource groups are created if missing, builds and pushes Docker images for the application, and deploys the Bicep-defined infrastructure with the correct parameters. The teardown workflow provides a safe, automated way to delete resource groups and clean up associated role assignments and resources. This level of automation reduces manual effort, minimizes human error, and improves the consistency and auditability of deployments. Beyond the technical implementation, this paper examines the choice of Azure Bicep in relation to other automation tools, considering factors such as the learning curve, cloud-native integration, and support for Azure-specific features. It also examines the benefits of utilizing GitHub Actions over other CI/CD solutions, including ease of use, pricing, and seamless integration with GitHub repositories. The objectives of this paper are threefold. First, it aims to demonstrate the design of a secure, modular, and automated infrastructure deployment pipeline for Azure using Bicep and GitHub Actions. Second, it seeks to provide practical guidance and real-world examples to help practitioners adopt similar approaches in their own projects. Third, it evaluates the strengths and limitations of the chosen tools to inform decision making around programmable infrastructure and CI/CD strategies for Azure-based development. By combining Azure-native software-defined infrastructure with modern CI/CD automation, this approach provides a robust, maintainable, and scalable framework for securely and consistently deploying applications to Azure.