Azure Management Groups Enable Scalable Management

• Azure Management Groups can help unify Azure security, management, and policy configuration across large organizations.
• The new capability could help organizations get a handle on Azure resources and cost.
• It will require planning and work to see benefits.

Azure Management Groups are a new capability for organizing Azure subscriptions and the resources within them. They offer more flexibility than the simple hierarchical model available via the Azure Enterprise Agreement (EA) portal.

Service Overview

Azure Management Groups are a concept for hierarchical management of resource groups and subscriptions. Resource groups organize all Azure resources such as VMs and databases for a specific application or workload. Subscriptions combine resource groups, administrative rights, and a billing method, and they are typically assigned to an organization’s product groups or by area sub-teams (for example, by application project).

Management groups allow Azure administrators to create a hierarchy that contains all of the subscriptions and resources in their Azure tenancy. Administrators can then use Azure management tools to set standards for how Azure resources are deployed within subscriptions in a group. The tools include the following: