The portal, the subscription and the resource group
The portal, your control console
The Azure portal (portal.azure.com) is the web interface you use to create and watch over your resources. Like any web interface under continuous updates, the exact position of a button, the exact wording of a checkbox, or the order of menus can change from one week to the next. The field names used in this course describe the logic of the action; if a label does not match exactly what you see, look for the box that serves the same purpose rather than the exact word.
The subscription, the billing unit
A subscription is the container that links your resources to a payment method. Everything you create in Azure belongs to a subscription, and that subscription receives the bill at the end of the month.
The resource group, the storage unit
A resource group gathers resources that share the same lifecycle: an application, a project, a lab. The name has no particular technical meaning, you can call it whatever you want, as long as it stays unique within your subscription.
Why group resources
- Deleting the group deletes everything inside it, in a single action.
- Applying an access right on the group applies it to all its resources.
- Tracking the group's cost gives you the project's cost, without checking resources one by one.
One resource brings others along
When you create a virtual machine from the portal, Azure does not create just a VM. The form automatically adds a managed disk, a virtual network card, a public IP address and a network security group, all placed in the same resource group as the VM. After creation, look inside the group: you will find this family of resources, even though you only asked for one.
Keep this habit: before creating anything in Azure, pick or create the resource group that will hold it first. It is also the first thing to delete at the end of a lab.