Manage Azure Resource Groups by using Azure PowerShell

Learn how to use Azure PowerShell with Azure Resource Manager to manage your Azure resource groups. For managing Azure resources, see Manage Azure resources by using Azure PowerShell.

Prerequisites

What is a resource group

A resource group is a container that holds related resources for an Azure solution. The resource group can include all the resources for the solution, or only those resources that you want to manage as a group. You decide how you want to add resources to resource groups based on what makes the most sense for your organization. Generally, add resources that share the same lifecycle to the same resource group so you can easily deploy, update, and delete them as a group.

The resource group stores metadata about the resources. When you specify a location for the resource group, you're specifying where that metadata is stored. For compliance reasons, you may need to ensure that your data is stored in a particular region.

Create resource groups

To create a resource group, use New-AzResourceGroup.

New-AzResourceGroup -Name exampleGroup -Location westus

List resource groups

To list the resource groups in your subscription, use Get-AzResourceGroup.

Get-AzResourceGroup

To get one resource group, provide the name of the resource group.

Get-AzResourceGroup -Name exampleGroup

Delete resource groups

To delete a resource group, use Remove-AzResourceGroup.

Remove-AzResourceGroup -Name exampleGroup

For more information about how Azure Resource Manager orders the deletion of resources, see Azure Resource Manager resource group deletion.

Deploy resources

You can deploy Azure resources by using Azure PowerShell, or by deploying an Azure Resource Manager (ARM) template or Bicep file.

Deploy resources by using storage operations

The following example creates a storage account. The name you provide for the storage account must be unique across Azure.

New-AzStorageAccount -ResourceGroupName exampleGroup -Name examplestore -Location westus -SkuName "Standard_LRS"

Deploy resources by using an ARM template or Bicep file

To deploy an ARM template or Bicep file, use New-AzResourceGroupDeployment.

New-AzResourceGroupDeployment -ResourceGroupName exampleGroup -TemplateFile storage.bicep

The following example shows the Bicep file named storage.bicep that you're deploying:

@minLength(3)
@maxLength(11)
param storagePrefix string

var uniqueStorageName = concat(storagePrefix, uniqueString(resourceGroup().id))

resource uniqueStorage 'Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts@2022-09-01' = {
  name: uniqueStorageName
  location: 'eastus'
  sku: {
    name: 'Standard_LRS'
  }
  kind: 'StorageV2'
  properties: {
    supportsHttpsTrafficOnly: true
  }
}

For more information about deploying an ARM template, see Deploy resources with ARM templates and Azure PowerShell.

For more information about deploying a Bicep file, see Deploy resources with Bicep and Azure PowerShell.

Lock resource groups

Locking prevents other users in your organization from accidentally deleting or modifying critical resources.

To prevent a resource group and its resources from being deleted, use New-AzResourceLock.

New-AzResourceLock -LockName LockGroup -LockLevel CanNotDelete -ResourceGroupName exampleGroup

To get the locks for a resource group, use Get-AzResourceLock.

Get-AzResourceLock -ResourceGroupName exampleGroup

To delete a lock, use Remove-AzResourceLock.

$lockId = (Get-AzResourceLock -ResourceGroupName exampleGroup).LockId
Remove-AzResourceLock -LockId $lockId

For more information, see Lock resources with Azure Resource Manager.

Tag resource groups

You can apply tags to resource groups and resources to logically organize your assets. For information, see Using tags to organize your Azure resources.

Export resource groups to templates

To assist with creating ARM templates, you can export a template from existing resources. For more information, see Use Azure PowerShell to export a template.

Manage access to resource groups

Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC) is the way that you manage access to resources in Azure. For more information, see Add or remove Azure role assignments using Azure PowerShell.

Next steps