Improve Security by Migrating from Azure Service Management to Azure Resource Management

There are two management models currently available in Microsoft Azure: Azure Service Management (ASM) and Azure Resource Management (ARM).

If you’ve been around Azure for a while, you probably think in terms of ASM being the “old” or “v1” version of the Azure, and ARM as the “new” or “v2” version.

If you haven’t been around Azure for a while, you might notice in our documentation that we refer to the ASM model as “classic”, as in “classic VMs”.

You can learn more about the differences between ASM and ARM by reading Azure Deployment Models.

The current ARM model has a lot to recommend it and we advise you to use it for all new deployments. That’s all well and good, but you might be asking “what does this have to do with security?” That’s a great question and the answer is “a lot”.

All our current and future efforts are being dedicated to the ARM management model and that includes our investments in Azure security. To get the most out of our security efforts, you’ll want to make sure your deployments are in the ARM model. That’s pretty easy when you’re starting new, but what if you’ve already invested in the ASM model and have deployments in it?

You’ll need to migrate them to ARM. The good news is that we have articles and tools that can help you with this! Check out the following articles to get your started:

• Technical Deep Dive on Platform Supported Migration from Classic to Azure Resource Manager
• Migrate IaaS Resources from Classic to Azure Resource Manager using Azure PowerShell
• Migrate IaaS Resources from Classic to Azure Resource Manager using Azure CLI
• Clone a Classic Virtual Machine to Azure Resource Manager using PowerShell Scripts

We hope you find these articles useful as you migrate to ARM. Remember that there are comment sections at the bottom of each of these articles and you can ask for clarification on any issues you’re having problems with in those comment sections.

HTH,

Thanks!

Tom
Tom Shinder
Program Manager, Azure Security
@tshinder | Facebook | LinkedIn | Email | Web | Bing me! | GOOG me!

Comments

• Anonymous
  May 31, 2016
  Tom,It's easy to say we need to move to ARM, however, there are way to many resources that do not support ARM and we have no direction from Microsoft.
  • Anonymous
    June 01, 2016
    Hi Mike - I understand how you feel here. Can you help us understand what your top of mind issues are that need to be supported by ARM? Thanks! -Tom.