This is the second post in our series Understanding Azure Resource Manager. In the previous post, we introduced what Azure Resource Manager was. We will continue with Azure Resource Groups.

Azure Resource Group helps you to organized resources into a coherent structure, a logical container for resources deployed on Azure. If you delete a resource group, all resources contained within are also deleted.

Effective use of resource groups gives you the ability to apply role-based access control (RBAC) permissions at the resource group level which can ease administration.

Below is pertinent information you should know about resource groups.

  • All resources must reside in a resource group
  • A resource can only be a member of a single resource group.
  • Resources can be moved between resource groups at any time.
  • Resource groups cannot be nested.

Naming convention

For resource groups, the best practice is to use a combination of

  • what it’s used for (could be cost centre or production environment)
  • the types of resources contained within
  • the type of resource it is (usually rg)

Example will be prod-core-infrasturcture-rg, finance-vms-rg, vnet-rg

Organizing principles

Resources in resource groups can be organized in several ways. We can organise them by

  • a combination of resources deemed to work together
  • their importance to the overall infrastructure
  • resource type
  • environment (prod, test, dev)
  • department
  • for authorisation, organize resources by who needs to administer them.
  • their life-cycle, dispose them easily by deleting the resource group. This is a useful feature in production environment.
  • for billing, for usage in billing reports

The bottom line is that you have flexibility in how you organize resources in your resource groups. Put some thought into it so that you have a coherent approach to how you use resource groups in your Azure environment.