Azure Policy

In this lesson, we'll explore the purpose of Azure Policy and how it helps you ensure your resources stay compliant with corporate standards. Azure Policy is a service in Azure that enables you to create, assign, and manage policies that control or audit your resources, enforcing rules to maintain compliance across your resource configurations.

How Does Azure Policy Define Policies?

Azure Policy allows you to define both individual policies and groups of related policies, known as initiatives. These policies evaluate your resources, highlight noncompliant resources, and can even prevent noncompliant resources from being created in the first place.

Key Features of Azure Policy:

• Scope and Inheritance : Policies can be set at different levels, such as a specific resource, resource group, or subscription. Policies are inherited, meaning a policy set at a higher level will automatically apply to all resources within that scope.
• Built-in Definitions : Azure Policy includes built-in policy and initiative definitions for various services such as Storage, Networking, Compute, Security Center, and Monitoring. For instance, you can define a policy that restricts the size of virtual machines (VMs) in your environment.
• Automatic Remediation : In some cases, Azure Policy can automatically remediate noncompliant resources and configurations. For example, if a resource in a certain resource group should have a specific tag and it’s missing, Azure Policy can automatically apply that tag.
• Exception Management : You retain full control of your environment. If there’s a resource that shouldn’t be automatically fixed, you can flag it as an exception to prevent the policy from automatically applying changes.

Azure Policy and Azure DevOps

Azure Policy integrates seamlessly with Azure DevOps, applying policies relevant to the pre-deployment and post-deployment phases of your applications. This integration ensures continuous…