How to Use Azure Resource Groups for Better VM Management

When you create a virtual machine in Microsoft Azure, you are required to assign it to an Azure Resource Group. This grouping structure may seem like just another bit of administrivia, but savvy users will utilize this structure for better governance and cost management for their infrastructure.

What are Azure Resources Groups?

Azure Resources Groups are logical collections of virtual machines, storage accounts, virtual networks, web apps, databases, and/or database servers. Typically, users will group related resources for an application, divided into groups for production and non-production — but you can subdivide further as needed.

You will manage groups through the “Azure Resource Manager”, where you can deploy and manage groups. Benefits of the Azure Resource Manager include the ability to manage your infrastructure in a visual UI rather than through scripts; tagging management; deployment templates; and simplified role-based access control.

Group structures like Azure’s exist at the other big public clouds — AWS, for example, offers optional Resource Groups, and Google Cloud “projects” define a level of grouping that falls someplace between Azure subscriptions and Azure Resource Groups.

How to Use Azure Resource Groups Effectively for Governance

Azure resource groups are a handy tool for role-based access control (RBAC). Typically, you will want to grant user access at the group level — groups make this simpler to manage and provide greater visibility.

Effective use of tagging allows you to identify resources for technical, automation, billing, and security purposes. Tags can extend beyond resource groups, which allows you to use tags to associate groups and resources that belong to the same project, application, or service. Be sure to apply tagging best practices, such as requiring a standard set of tags to be applied before a resource is deployed, to ensure you’re optimizing your resources.

Azure Resources Groups Simplify Cost Management

Azure Resource Groups also provide a ready-made structure for cost allocation — groups make it simpler to identify costs at a project level. Additionally, you can use managing and to manage resource scheduling and, when they’re no longer needed, termination.

You can do this manually, or through your cost optimization platform such as ParkMyCloud. To this end, we have just released functionality that allows you to use ParkMyCloud’s policy engine to manage Azure resources at the group level. For almost all Azure users, this means automatic assignment to teams, so you can provide governed user access to ParkMyCloud. It also means you can set on/off schedules at the group level, to turn your non-production groups off when they’re not needed. Try it out and let us know what you think.

Originally published at www.parkmycloud.com on October 31, 2018.