Relationship between Azure AD and subscriptions
Azure subscriptions have trust relationships associated with Azure AD. Through this trust, a subscription enables Azure AD to authenticate users, services, and devices.
A tenant can have a 1:M relationship with subscriptions (meaning it can be associated with multiple subscriptions), but a subscription can only have a 1:1 relationship with a tenant (meaning a subscription can only be associated with one tenant). You can see an overview of this in the following diagram:
Figure 4.24 – Azure AD and subscription relationship
You have now seen the relationship structure and have an understanding of the management hierarchy.
Why do we have multiple subscriptions in an environment?
This is part of theorganizational strategy when defining Azure, and it’s important to understand the segregation of data and resources and how this will be managed perpetually by the business. Some motivations to split out resource groups are separating resources by the following:
- Different business units (BUs) (Finance/IT/Marketing)
- Different environments (Dev/Test/UAT/PROD)
- Geographic (West Europe/Central US)
- Cost centers (could be the same as BUs or a unique code)
Tip
When defining governance around Azure, it’s important to define a naming convention that will be applied across multiple layers, including subscriptions. It’s recommended to identify a subscription location and purpose in the name—for example, WE_PROD.
Further reading
That brings this section to an end. In this section, we have learned about what subscriptions are, why they are necessary, strategic items to consider, and billing ownership associated with subscriptions.
We encourage you to read up further by using the following links:
- Initial subscription strategy: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/ azure/cloud-adoption-framework/ready/azure-best-practices/ initial-subscriptions
- Multi-subscription strategy: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/ azure/cloud-adoption-framework/ready/azure-best-practices/ scale-subscriptions
Managing costs
Azure Cost Management + Billing is a suite of tools designed to assist in the analysis, management, and cost optimization of Azure workloads. It assists in the following management tasks relating to costs:
- Billing administration tasks
- Managing billing access
- Reports on cost and usage data
- Configuration of budgets
- Identifying opportunities to optimize costs
