Terraform-provider-azurerm: `azurerm_virtual_machine` - VM Size should be case insensitive

[clangaxon]

Example:

~ azurerm_storage_account.mystorageaccount
resource_group_name: "myresourcegroup" => "MyResourceGroup"

apply does nothing, so it always shows as an outstanding change in 0.3.2.

[clangaxon]

I'm also seeing this with vm_size:

~ module.test.azurerm_virtual_machine.vm[0]
vm_size: "Standard_DS13_v2" => "Standard_DS13_V2"

[clangaxon]

and on VM network interface attachments:

network_interface_ids.#: "1" => "1"
network_interface_ids.0: "/subscriptions/xxx/resourceGroups/yyy/providers/Microsoft.Network/networkInterfaces/zzznetworkInterface" => "/subscriptions/xxx/resourceGroups/yyy/providers/Microsoft.network/networkInterfaces/zzznetworkInterface"

"Microsoft.Network" v. "Microsoft.network".

[internetstaff]

This is still a problem in 1.0.1.

[tombuildsstuff]

hey @clangaxon

Thanks for opening this issue

In general Providers in Terraform are case sensitive (for instance in the AWS and GCP Providers are _mostly_ case sensitive) - for the Azure Provider we have a little bit of leeway since folks are coming from ARM Templates which mostly is case insensitive. Unfortunately this doesn't apply to all fields, since certain Azure API's are case sensitive - and Terraform requires ID's to be case sensitive:

So to reply to each issue in-line:

~ azurerm_storage_account.mystorageaccount
resource_group_name: "myresourcegroup" => "MyResourceGroup"

Resource Group names are inconsistent through Azure - in some API's they're case sensitive, whereas in others they're case insensitive. As this is such a common field (it's on every resource) - I think it's better to be consistent here and not make this field case insensitive, than be inconsistent throughout resources.

As such, we'd recommend updating the Resource Group Name in your Terraform Configuration to match the casing used in Azure.

~ module.test.azurerm_virtual_machine.vm[0]
vm_size: "Standard_DS13_v2" => "Standard_DS13_V2"

Users commonly write the VM Size in a different case (either all upper or all lower case) than Azure returns. Since the API isn't case sensitive here - @echuvyrov is going to send a PR to make this field case insensitive.

and on VM network interface attachments:

network_interface_ids.#: "1" => "1"
network_interface_ids.0: "/subscriptions/xxx/resourceGroups/yyy/providers/Microsoft.Network/networkInterfaces/zzznetworkInterface" => "/subscriptions/xxx/resourceGroups/yyy/providers/Microsoft.network/networkInterfaces/zzznetworkInterface"

"Microsoft.Network" v. "Microsoft.network".

Given this is an identifier Terraform requires that this is case sensitive (since we split the URI into a Map/Dictionary and access the values by their case sensitive names) - as such we can't update this field to be case insensitive.

Technically what's happening here is that the Microsoft.network value is being sent to Azure - but Azure's returning with Microsoft.Network - which is conflicting. Whilst the Azure API can handle submitting values in different casings - Terraform is case specific here; in general we'd recommend using a Data Source to access the ID for a resource, rather than hard-coding it - but I'm aware there's no Data Source for Network Interface at this time. @dcaro has started work on that this week - and I'd expect that to ship in a release in the near future.

In the mean time - to resolve this issue you should be able to update the input data from Microsoft.network to Microsoft.Network.

Given the outstanding issue is related to the VM Size - I'm going to update the title of this issue to mention this; and @echuvyrov should be adding a fix for this in the near future.

Thanks!

[echuvyrov]

Hi @clangaxon, I tried to repro the issue with vm_size casing, but cannot seem to duplicate it. Is it possible to provide a small repro script/scenario? I tried running the block of code below with both "Standard_DS13_v2" and "Standard_DS13_V2" and successive applies do not detect the changes after initial deploy.

...
# Create virtual machine
resource "azurerm_virtual_machine" "myterraformvm" {
    name                  = "myVM"
    location              = "East US"
    resource_group_name   = "${azurerm_resource_group.myterraformgroup.name}"
    network_interface_ids = ["${azurerm_network_interface.myterraformnic.id}"]
    vm_size               = "Standard_DS1_v2"
...

[clangaxon]

@tombuildsstuff

1. Resource Group naming:

I disagree with not fixing this because the case change doesn't apply. If it can't be applied, it makes more sense for Terraform be aware that Azure doesn't consider it a change and not to try to apply it repeatedly.

Since it behaves this way, it seems that this API is not case sensitive either and the same conclusion would be reached as for vm sizes?

1. NIC names:

We aren't hard coding a resource id: all of these were either created by Terraform or imported.

In this case the NIC is "Microsoft.network" and the VM is "Microsoft.Network".

Removing the state of both "corrects" the NIC to "Microsoft.Network", but ironically, now they disagree on the actual NIC name - the NIC id imports as "hostnameNetworkInterface" and the VM imports as "hostnamenetworkInterface".

This may be the result of some old state transition, variances across Terraform versions, or internal changes in Azure, but the underlying problem here is, as in both other cases, that Azure appears case-insensitive since the case change continually reapplies but changes nothing.

This may be challenging to fix due to the URI splitting, but so far I don't see a work-around.

[dcaro]

@clangaxon I have submitted the following PR for a data source on network interfaces. https://github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-azurerm/pull/854

Please share any feedback that you may have.

[clangaxon]

Another case sensitivity issue:

security_rule.0.protocol: "TCP" => "tcp" security_rule.1.protocol: "TCP" => "tcp" security_rule.10.protocol: "TCP" => "tcp" security_rule.11.protocol: "UDP" => "udp" security_rule.12.protocol: "UDP" => "udp" security_rule.13.protocol: "UDP" => "udp" security_rule.14.protocol: "TCP" => "tcp" security_rule.15.protocol: "UDP" => "udp" security_rule.16.protocol: "TCP" => "tcp" security_rule.2.protocol: "TCP" => "tcp" security_rule.3.protocol: "TCP" => "tcp" security_rule.4.protocol: "TCP" => "tcp" security_rule.5.protocol: "TCP" => "tcp" security_rule.6.protocol: "UDP" => "udp" security_rule.7.name: "X" => "Y" security_rule.7.protocol: "TCP" => "tcp" security_rule.8.protocol: "TCP" => "tcp" security_rule.9.protocol: "TCP" => "tcp"

The difference in protocol case alone won't trigger a change, but if another change triggers an NSG change, it lists all the differences in protocol capitalization.

[clangaxon]

@dcaro That seems like a nice addition, but I'm not sure how that addresses our issue of the states getting out of sync between Azure and multiple tfstate references to a NIC? We build the NIC and attach it to a VM ...

[metacpp]

@echuvyrov is the VM size issue fixed ?

[metacpp]

Windows 10 environment only:

resource "azurerm_resource_group" "test" {
  name     = "new-resource-group"
  location = "West Europe"
}

1. terraform init
2. terraform plan
3. terraform apply
4. terraform plan

Even you don't have any code change, the terraform plan will always report it needs to create a new resource group:

An execution plan has been generated and is shown below.
Resource actions are indicated with the following symbols:
  + create

Terraform will perform the following actions:

  + azurerm_resource_group.test
      id:       <computed>
      location: "westeurope"
      name:     "new-resource-group"
      tags.%:   <computed>


Plan: 1 to add, 0 to change, 0 to destroy.

@jeffreyCline we need to fix this issue for arm_resource_group, although API tolerate this duplicated call.

[WodansSon]

I am still not able to repro this issue on Linux, this maybe a Windows only bug. I will attempt to repro the issue on a Windows OS.

Refreshing Terraform state in-memory prior to plan...
The refreshed state will be used to calculate this plan, but will not be
persisted to local or remote state storage.

azurerm_resource_group.test: Refreshing state... (ID: /subscriptions/.../resourceGroups/New-resource-group)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

No changes. Infrastructure is up-to-date.

This means that Terraform did not detect any differences between your
configuration and real physical resources that exist. As a result, no
actions need to be performed.

[tombuildsstuff]

@metacpp @jeffreyCline heads up that’s a regression with Windows that’s been fixed in Terraform 0.11.5, released earlier today

[metacpp]

@jeffreyCline please double confirm if all the casing issues discussed in this thread are fixed by 0.11.5.

[metacpp]

Issue List

Linux

• [x] Resource Group Naming.
  
  
  
  • [x] VM Size Naming.
  
  
• [x] NIC Naming.
• [x] Security Rule protocol Naming.
• [x] LoadBalanceRule Protocol and FE IP CONFIG Naming.

Windows

• [x] Resource Group Naming.
  Action Item: _Update to v0.11.5._
• [x] VM Size Naming.
• [x] NIC Naming.
• [x] Security Rule protocol Naming.
• [x] LoadBalanceRule Protocol and FE IP CONFIG Naming.

Configuration

Terraform v0.11.5
+ provider.azurerm v1.3.1

@jeffreyCline please use this list to update the validation result and the action items.
@metacpp I have validated all of the above scenarios on both Linux and Windows, with the new Terraform v0.11.5 both behave the same. I am now closing this issue as fixed.

[tombuildsstuff]

@metacpp @jeffreyCline sorry, to clarify in this comment I was referring to this comment:

Even you don't have any code change, the terraform plan will always report it needs to create a new resource group:

which was broken in v0.11.4 of Terraform Core and fixed in v0.11.5 (I can't comment to the rest of this issue, however)

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