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Resource Groups and Naming

Scope: the folder everything lives in, and names that won't bite you later.

The one rule

Every resource lives in exactly one resource group, and deleting the group deletes everything in it.

That's the whole chapter, really. A resource group is a folder with a superpower: az group delete is the "nuke the entire experiment" button. Spun up a VM, a database, and a network to try something? Delete the group and all three are gone, billing stops, nothing lingers. This is your primary defense against the forgotten-resource bill (see Pricing and Cost Control).

$ az group create --name rg-demo --location eastus

$ az group delete --name rg-demo --yes --no-wait

Check: after creating, az group show --name rg-demo --query name prints "rg-demo". After deleting, the same command errors — that's success.

--yes skips the "are you sure" prompt; --no-wait returns immediately instead of blocking until Azure finishes deleting. Without --no-wait, the command sits there until every resource is gone.

One group per thing

Make a group per project or experiment: rg-blog, rg-minecraft-test, rg-client-acme. Not one giant group for everything (then the nuke button is too dangerous to use) and not one group per resource (then you have fifty groups). Per thing you're working on is the sweet spot.

A resource group has a location, but it's mostly metadata — it decides where the group's bookkeeping lives, not where your resources run. Your VM's region is set on the VM. Still, put the group in the same region as its resources; future you will thank present you.

Naming that won't bite you

Azure names have rules, and the rules differ per resource — some allow dashes, some don't; some are globally unique (storage accounts), some only need to be unique in the group. Rather than memorizing, follow three habits:

  1. Lowercase, dashes, numbers. rg-blog-prod works almost everywhere. Some resources are picky (storage account names must be 3–24 lowercase letters and numbers, no dashes at all), so lowercase and dashes is the safest default.
  2. Prefix with the type. rg- for groups, vm- for VMs, st for storage, vnet- for networks. When you're staring at a list of forty resources, the prefix tells you what each one is.
  3. Include the purpose. rg-blog-prod vs rg-blog-test — the day you delete the wrong one is the day this habit pays for itself.

Keep names short: some resources cap at 24 characters (storage accounts) or 64 (most others). The prefix-purpose-env pattern usually fits.

Tags: the label maker

Tags are key=value labels on resources: env=prod, owner=paul, project=blog. They cost nothing and do two jobs: they show up in cost reports (so you can see what the blog actually costs), and they let you find things (az resource list --tag project=blog).

$ az group create --name rg-blog --location eastus \
    --tags project=blog env=prod

Tag at creation. Retrofitting tags across forty resources is nobody's idea of fun.