Azure Policy definition structure aliases

  • Article

You use property aliases to access specific properties for a resource type. Aliases enable you to restrict what values or conditions are allowed for a property on a resource. Each alias maps to paths in different API versions for a given resource type. During policy evaluation, the policy engine gets the property path for that API version.

The list of aliases is always growing. To find which aliases Azure Policy supports, use one of the following methods:

  • Azure Policy extension for Visual Studio Code (recommended)

    Use the Azure Policy extension for Visual Studio Code to view and discover aliases for resource properties.

    Screenshot of the Azure Policy extension for Visual Studio Code hovering over a property to display the alias names.

  • Azure PowerShell

    # Login first with Connect-AzAccount if not using Cloud Shell

# Use Get-AzPolicyAlias to list available providers
Get-AzPolicyAlias -ListAvailable

# Use Get-AzPolicyAlias to list aliases for a Namespace (such as Azure Compute -- Microsoft.Compute)
(Get-AzPolicyAlias -NamespaceMatch 'compute').Aliases

    Note

    To find aliases that can be used with the modify effect, use the following command in Azure PowerShell 4.6.0 or higher:

    Get-AzPolicyAlias | Select-Object -ExpandProperty 'Aliases' | Where-Object { $_.DefaultMetadata.Attributes -eq 'Modifiable' }

  • Azure CLI

    # Login first with az login if not using Cloud Shell

# List namespaces
az provider list --query [*].namespace

# Get Azure Policy aliases for a specific Namespace (such as Azure Compute -- Microsoft.Compute)
az provider show --namespace Microsoft.Compute --expand "resourceTypes/aliases" --query "resourceTypes[].aliases[].name"

  • REST API

    GET https://management.azure.com/providers/?api-version=2019-10-01&$expand=resourceTypes/aliases

Understanding the array alias

Several of the aliases that are available have a version that appears as a normal name and another that has [*] attached to it, which is an array alias. For example:

  • Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/networkAcls.ipRules

  • Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/networkAcls.ipRules[*]

  • The normal alias represents the field as a single value. This field is for exact match comparison scenarios when the entire set of values must be exactly as defined.

  • The array alias [*] represents a collection of values selected from the elements of an array resource property. For example:

Alias Selected values
Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/networkAcls.ipRules[*] The elements of the ipRules array.
Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/networkAcls.ipRules[*].action The values of the action property from each element of the ipRules array.

When used in a field condition, array aliases make it possible to compare each individual array element to a target value. When used with count expression, it's possible to:

  • Check the size of an array.
  • Check if all\any\none of the array elements meet a complex condition.
  • Check if exactly n array elements meet a complex condition.

For more information and examples, see Referencing array resource properties.

Next steps