Microsoft Docs – Azure

Azure Management & Governance – Best Practices

Table of Contents

Identity & Access Management

Implement a least‑privilege model using Azure AD RBAC, groups, and conditional access.

  • Create role‑based groups (e.g., DevOps, Finance, Security) and assign built‑in or custom roles.
  • Leverage Azure AD Privileged Identity Management (PIM) for just‑in‑time elevation.
  • Enforce MFA and conditional access policies for all privileged accounts.
  • Use managed identities for services to avoid credential leakage.
# Example: Assign Reader role to a resource group
az role assignment create --assignee  \
    --role Reader \
    --resource-group MyResourceGroup

Policy & Compliance

Standardize resource configurations with Azure Policy and Azure Blueprints.

  • Define policies for location, SKU, tagging, and security baseline.
  • Use Policy initiatives to bundle related policies.
  • Apply policies at the subscription or management group level for consistency.
  • Integrate with Azure Security Center for continuous compliance checks.

Cost Management

Keep spend under control through budgeting, tagging, and automation.

  • Tag every resource with CostCenter, Environment, and Owner.
  • Set budgets and alerts in Cost Management + Billing.
  • Enable Azure Advisor recommendations for idle resources.
  • Use Automation Runbooks to shut down dev environments after hours.

Monitoring & Alerts

Implement end‑to‑end observability with Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and Service Health.

  • Collect metrics and logs in a centralized Log Analytics workspace.
  • Define action groups for critical alerts (Email, Teams, Webhook).
  • Use Azure Monitor Workbooks for visual dashboards.
  • Leverage Service Health to receive incident notifications.

Automation & Infrastructure as Code

Adopt IaC and CI/CD pipelines to enforce repeatable deployments.

  • Use Bicep or ARM templates for declarative provisioning.
  • Store IaC in Azure Repos or GitHub with branch policies.
  • Integrate with Azure Pipelines for validation, security scans, and deployment.
  • Implement Azure Automation State Configuration for post‑deployment drift detection.

Security & Hardening

Secure workloads through network segmentation, encryption, and threat protection.

  • Use Azure Firewall and NSGs to restrict traffic.
  • Enable Azure Disk Encryption and Customer‑managed keys (CMK) for data at rest.
  • Apply Microsoft Defender for Cloud plans for runtime protection.
  • Regularly run Microsoft Defender for Cloud Secure Score assessments.

Governance Model Blueprint

Combining these best practices into a layered governance model:

  1. Management Groups – define hierarchy (Root → Corp → Platform → Workload).
  2. Policy & Blueprint – enforce compliance at each level.
  3. RBAC – assign least‑privilege roles per group.
  4. Tagging – mandatory tags enforced by policy.
  5. Cost Alerts – budgets per management group.
  6. Monitoring – centralized Log Analytics workspace.
  7. Automation – IaC pipelines with automated compliance checks.
Azure Governance Model