Microsoft recently announced the public preview of so-called Azure Service Groups, a new feature designed to simplify resource management and observability across various Azure environments.
With Service Groups, the company introduces a flexible, tenant-level container that allows users to group Azure resources from anywhere within their tenant without impacting role-based access control (RBAC) or policy inheritance. In the documentation, Microsoft writes:
They’re ideal for scenarios requiring cross-boundary grouping, minimal permissions, and aggregations of data across resources.
Additionally, the company emphasizes that Service Groups are not a replacement for existing Azure resources, such as Management Groups or Resource Groups. Instead, they complement them by offering a new layer of abstraction for scenarios where traditional scopes fall short.
A former Azure program manager noted in a LinkedIn post that a key scenario for Service Groups is creating a central container for metadata. Teams can then repeatedly connect resources, resource groups, or even subscriptions to this container. These Service Groups can represent a specific workload, application, or landing zone, providing a straightforward way to manage and organize assets at a higher level.
An example of Service Groups is that users can connect resources to Service Groups to gain a consolidated view of all resources of a particular type or function across the entire environment.
(Source: Microsoft Learn)
Some of the key features of Azure Service Groups are that they operate with low-privilege management, allowing users to manage resources with minimal permissions while minimizing excessive access. Furthermore, with Service Groups, Azure resources and scopes, located anywhere within the tenant, can become members of one or more service groups. Additionally, Service Groups can be nested, providing the ability to have multiple hierarchical structures, such as Cost Center, Product, Organization, and so on.
In an earlier blog post, Seppe van Winkel, an Azure solution architect, concluded:
Azure Service Groups are a promising step forward in making cloud resource management more human-friendly. Whether you’re managing sprawling enterprise systems or a multi-team startup environment, Service Groups help you keep a clearer view of what matters.
While Service Groups are a new feature for creating an abstraction layer, one person commented in a YouTube video by John Savill explaining Service Groups:
It’s definitely a nice new feature that will allow organizations to offer an abstraction layer to its users. I’m disappointed this mechanism cannot be used as a cost scope (yet?). Hopefully, this will be added in the future.
Lastly, users can leverage Service Groups via a REST API or the Azure Portal, and more information is available on the documentation landing page.
