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How does Microsoft Azure Works?

In the previous article we discussed about Azure as a collection of servers, networking hardware, and orchestration services. These orchestration services make it easy to create, read, update and delete resources as needed. However, unrestricted access can lead to the rapid creation of resources that are improperly configured, or lacks business alignments. This can result in inefficient cloud resource usage, security issues along with excess costs. The solution for this problem is resource access governance.

Governance refers to the ongoing process of configuring Azure’s resource access management tools management tools in order to meet the goals and requirements of your organization. Azure implements two governance tools; Role-based access control (RBAC), and Resource Policy.

RBAC defines the operations a user, or a group of users are permitted to take on a resource. A resource policy defines the type of resources a user or group of users is permitted to access that applies certain conditions of their use. The challenge in configuring Azure’s Governance tool is to strike a balance between enabling the agility for developers while ensuring that they work to resource and cost constraints. As you have seen earlier, the resource access controls the policies that are too permissive and could lead to inefficient cloud resource usage and excess cost. While the resource access controls and if that is too locked down then it can lead to an unintended reduction in the developer agility. For guidance, best practices, and consideration when configuring Azure’s Governance tools, please visit  Azure Architecture Center.