An Azure resource group is a way for you to, you guessed it, group a set of resources together. This is a useful capability in a public cloud so that you can manage permissions, set alerts, built deployment templates and audit logs on a subset of resources. Resource groups can contain, virtual machines, gateways, VNets, VPNs and about any other resource Azure can deploy.

Most items that you create will need to belong to a resource group but an item can only belong to a single resource group at a time. Resources can be moved from one resource group to another.

Create a Resource Group

To add a resource group navigate to the “Resource groups” object and click the Add button. Give the Resource Group a name and assign it to a subscription. Lastly enter a location and click submit.

You can click on your resource group to see the list of resources assigned to it.

Assign Permissions

One of the uses for resource groups is to assign permissions to the resources. You can assign a user limited access to a group of resources all at once. Go to the resource groups settings and select Users. Click Add.

Select a role.

Then select the user accounts to assume the role.

Add a Lock

Locks are useful to restrict permissions on a set of resources. Locks can prevent items from being deleted and a read-only lock can prevent changes to the resource group.

The benefits to resource groups goes on. You can tag resource groups and view costs for a resource group which might be a subset of a subscription. Alerts can be assigned to a group of resources and the most useful is an export template. Assume that you have a tiered application that requires several servers. Build the servers out once, add them to a resource group and then use the “Export template” option to then use it later on to redeploy it all from a script.