Accurately representing and naming your resources is essential for security purposes.

In a security incident, it is critical to identify affected systems quickly, what functions those systems support, and the potential business impact.

A useful naming convention composes resource names from important information about each resource. A well-chosen name helps you quickly identify the resource's type, its associated workload, its deployment environment, and the Azure region hosting it.

Some resource names, such as PaaS services with public endpoints or virtual machine DNS labels, have global scopes, so they must be unique across the Azure platform.

There's no one size fits all to Azure naming conventions, it needs to suit your organisation, however, it is worth noting that there are limitations to naming rules to Azure resources.

• Naming rules and restrictions for Azure resources
• Define your naming convention
• Deploy Azure Naming Tool into an Azure WebApp as a container

The use of these limitations and scopes have been used to determine the following naming conventions across associated resources.

Casing	Name Format
Lowercase	{organizationName}-{component}-{resourceTypeshortCode}-{regionShortCode}-{environmentlongcode}

Naming Convention Examples​

Environment	Application Name	Azure Region	Azure Service	Example Name
Production	application1	Australia East	App Service	company-application1-asvc-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	App Service Environment	company-application1-ase-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	App Service Plan	company-application1-asp-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Application Gateway	company-application1-agw-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Automation Account	company-application1-aum-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Availability Set	company-application1-avs-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes cluster	company-application1-arck-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Azure Arc enabled server	company-application1-arcs-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Azure Cosmos DB database	company-application1-cosmos-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Azure Data Factory	company-application1-adf-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Azure Search	company-application1-srch-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Azure SQL Database	company-application1-sqldb-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Azure SQL Elastic Pool	company-application1-sqlep-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Azure SQL Server	company-application1-sql-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Container registry	company-application1-cr-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Cosmos DB	company-application1-cdb-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Function App	company-application1-func-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Gateway connection	company-application1-cn-au-e-prod
Test	application1	Australia East	IoT Central	company-application1-iotc-au-e-test
Test	application1	Australia East	Key Vault	company-application1-kv-au-e-test
Test	application1	Australia East	Load Balancer	company-application1-lb-au-e-test
Test	application1	Australia East	Local Network Gateway	company-application1-lgw-au-e-test
Test	application1	Australia East	Log Analytics workspace	company-application1-la-au-e-test
Production	application1	Australia East	MySQL database	company-application1-mysql-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Network Interface	company-application1-nic-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Network Security Group	company-application1-nsg-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Network Security Group Rule	company-application1-nsg-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Public IP Address	company-application1-pip-au-e-prod
Production		Australia East	Recovery Services vault	company-rsv-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Recovery Services Vault - Backup policies	company-application1-rsvp-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Resource Group	company-application1-rg-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Route table	company-application1-route-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Runbooks	company-application1-run-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Service Bus - Namespace	company-application1-sbns-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	SQL Data Warehouse	company-application1-sqldw-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	SQL Managed Instance	company-application1-sqlmi-au-e-prod
Production	App1	Australia East	Storage Account	company-pp1-stg-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Subnet	company-application1-snet-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Subscription	company-application1-sub-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Traffic Manager Profile	company-application1-tmp-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	User defined route (UDR)	company-application1-udr-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Virtual machine scale set	company-application1-vmss-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Virtual Network	company-application1-vn-au-e-prod
Production	application1	Australia East	Virtual Network Gateway	company-application1-vngw-au-e-prod

Resource Group​

Environment	Application Name	Azure Region	Azure Service	Example Name
Production	application1	Australia East	Resource Group	company-application1-rg-au-e-prod

Resource Type Codes​

Resource Type	Short Code	Scope	Character Limit
App Service	asvc	Global	40
App Service Environment	ase	Resource Group	38
App Service Plan	asp	Resource Group	40
Application Gateway	agw	Resource Group	80
Automation Account	aum	Resource Group	50
Availability Set	avs	Resource Group	80
Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes cluster	arck	Resource Group	63
Azure Arc enabled server	arcs	Resource Group	15
Azure Cosmos DB database	cosmos	Global	63
Azure Data Factory	adf	Global	63
Azure Search	srch	Global	60
Azure SQL Database	sqldb	Server	128
Azure SQL Elastic Pool	sqlep	Server	128
Azure SQL Server	sql	Global	63
Container registry	cr	Global	50
Cosmos DB	cdb	Global	50
Function App	func	Global	40
Gateway connection	cn	Resource Group	80
IoT Central	iotc	Global	63
Key Vault	kv	Global	24
Load Balancer	lb	Resource Group	80
Local Network Gateway	lgw	Resource Group	80
Log Analytics workspace	la	Global	24
MySQL database	mysql	Global	63
Network Interface	nic	Resource Group	80
Network Security Group	nsg	Resource Group	80
Network Security Group Rule	nsg	Resource Group	80
Public IP Address	pip	Resource Group	80
Recovery Services vault	rsv	Resource Group	50
Recovery Services Vault - Backup policies	rsvp	vault	50
Resource Group	rg	Global	64
Route table	route	Resource Group	80
Runbooks	run	Automation Account	63
Service Bus - Namespace	sbns	Global	50
SQL Data Warehouse	sqldw	Global	63
SQL Managed Instance	sqlmi	Global	63
Storage Account	stg	Global	24
Subnet	snet	Virtual Network	80
Subscription	sub	Account	64
Traffic Manager Profile	tmp	Resource Group	63
User defined route (UDR)	udr	Resource Group	80
Virtual Machine	vm	Resource Group	15
Virtual machine scale set	vmss	Resource Group	15
Virtual Network	vn	Resource Group	63
Virtual Network Gateway	vngw	Resource Group	80

Environment Names​

Environment Name	Long Code
Development	dev
Test	test
Staging	stg
Production	prod

Azure Regions​

Azure Region	Geo Short Code	Datacentre Short Code	Short Code
East US	us	e	us-e
East US 2	us	e2	us-e2
Central US	us	c	us-c
North Central US	us	cn	us-cn
West Central US	us	cw	us-cw
West US	us	w	us-w
West US 2	us	w2	us-w2
Australia East	au	e	au-e
Australia Southeast	au	se	au-se
Australia Central	au	c	au-c
New Zealand North	nz	n	nz-n

Organizing cloud-based resources is a crucial task for IT unless you only have simple deployments. Use naming and tagging standards to organize your resources for these reasons:

• Resource management: Your IT teams will need to quickly locate resources associated with specific workloads, environments, ownership groups, or other important information. Organizing resources is critical to assigning organizational roles and access permissions for resource management.
• Cost management and optimization: Making business groups aware of cloud resource consumption requires IT to understand each team's resources and workloads.
• Operations management: Visibility for the operations management team regarding business commitments and SLAs is an essential aspect of ongoing operations.
• Security: Classification of data and security impact is a vital data point for the team when breaches or other security issues arise.
• Governance and regulatory compliance: Maintaining consistency across resources helps identify deviation from agreed-upon policies.
• Automation: In addition to making resources easier for IT to manage, a proper organizational scheme allows you to take advantage of automation as part of resource creation, operational monitoring, and the result of DevOps processes.

Workload optimization: Tagging can help identify patterns and resolve broad issues. A tag can also help determine the assets required to support a single workload. Tagging all assets associated with each workload enables a more profound analysis of your mission-critical workloads to make sound architectural decisions.

• Use tags to organize your Azure resources and management hierarchy

Tagging Types​

The common tagging patterns listed below provide examples of how tagging can be used to organize cloud assets. These patterns are not meant to be exclusive and can be used in parallel, providing multiple ways of organizing assets based on your company's needs.

Tag type	Examples	Description
Functional	app = catalogsearch1 tier = web webserver = apache env = prod env = staging env = dev	Categorize resources in relation to their purpose within a workload, what environment they have been deployed to, or other functionality and operational details.
Classification	confidentiality = private SLA = 24hours	Classifies a resource by how it is used and what policies apply to it.
Accounting	department = finance program = business-initiative region = northamerica	Allows a resource to be associated with specific groups within an organization for billing purposes.
Partnership	owner = jsmith contactalias = catsearchowners stakeholders = user1; user2; user3	Provides information about what people (outside of IT) are related or otherwise affected by the resource.
Purpose	businessprocess = support businessimpact = moderate revenueimpact = high	Aligns resources to business functions to better support investment decisions.

Tagging Baselines​

Tag at the Resource Group level and then have an Azure policy implemented that tags the resources in that Resource Group with the appropriate tags.

Tag Name	Value	Tag Type	Description	Example
Environment	Production Development Sandbox	Functional	Tags the resources with the Environment Tag. This can be used to determine if a resource is Production, Development or Sandbox.	Environment: Production
Creator	{CreatorName}	Partnership	Tags the resource with the name of who created the resource. This can be used to determine who created the resource to be able to get more information.	Creator: Luke Murray
CreatedDate	{CreatedDate}	Purpose	Tags the resource with the Date/Time when the resource was created. This can be used to determine how old a resource is, which can be used to look at new functionality on created resources or check if resources are still required.	CreatedDate: 10:00 PM 03/06/2022 NZT
Criticality	P1 P2 P3	Purpose	Tags the resources with the criticality of the resources, i.e., if critical, then it is P1. This can be used to determine whether resources need to be highly available, whether changes can be made during or out of business hours.	Criticality:P1
SupportedBy	{TeamName}	Partnership	Tags the resources with the team/person or company who supports the resources, whether it is internally supported by the company or outsourced.	SupportedBy:Company
RequesterName	{Requestor}-{CompanyName)	Partnership	Tags the resources with the user that requested the creation of the resources.	RequesterName:Project Manager
BillTo	{BillTo}	Accounting	Tags the resources with the cost centre or project codes who will pay for the resources.	BillTo:AppTransformationProject1
AutoShutDown	Yes	Functional	This is an Automation functional tag, i.e., tag the resource (Virtual Machine) with a tagging code which will automatically Shut down and Start-up the Virtual Machine at specified times.	AutoShutDown:Yes
ApplicationName	{ProjectName}	Partnership	Tags the resource with the name of the project or what the resources in the resource group are for.	ApplicationName:AzureVirtualDesktopSH
Business Unit	{BusinessUnit}	Partnership	Tags the resource with the name of the Business Unit or Company that owns the resources.	BusinessUnit:Finance
Snapshot	True	Functional	This is an Automation functional tag, i.e., tag the resource (Disk) with a tagging code which can create daily snapshots of disks.	Snapshot:True

The path to becoming a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) is not as linear as some might think, others have a goal to receive the Microsoft MVP Award, and others have a passion for technology that shows in community activities such as speaking or user groups, helping others on forums, and helping to maintain documentation and helping others be up-to-speed with the ever changing ecosystem that is the Microsoft stack - it is not a one size fits all, just as there are multiple ways of learning, there are multiple ways to the MVP Award.

I join Christian Buckley for episode 167 of his #MVPbuzChat Podcast/Video chat, to tell my story, feel free to check it out (if you can ignore the bad camera angle!) and other MVPs talk about their journey to the Microsoft MVP Award.

• #MVPbuzzChat with Luke Murray

Solution architecture is concerned with the planning, design, implementation, and ongoing improvement of a technology system.

The architecture of a system must balance and align the business requirements with the technical capabilities that are needed to execute those requirements.

The finished architecture is a balance of risk, cost, and capability throughout the system and its components.

Running a solution in the cloud does not reduce the need for requirements to be clear. In fact, the flexibility and power provided by the cloud mean that it is even more important to have clear requirements from business stakeholders; otherwise, you could end up solving problems that don't exist, missing an important design decision, or going beyond the available budget by adding unnecessary resiliency.

Non-functional requirements (NFRs)​

Below is a short list of NFRs (not exhaustive) that may be provided by the business to help inform the design of a solution.

Reliability requirements​

• Service level agreement (SLA)
• Uptime objective
• Recovery time objective (RTO)
• Recovery point objective (RPO)
• Recoverability

Security requirements​

• Geographical location
• Compliance and legislation
• Identity and access management
• Privacy
• Data Integrity
• Public or private endpoints (or both)
• OWASP
• Hybrid connectivity
• DDOS

Performance requirements​

• Peak throughput, e.g., Requests per minute (RPM), active users
• Business plan for growth
• UX metrics (e.g., Page load time)
• Asynchronous vs Synchronous operations
• Workload profile (predictable, unpredictable, peak time of day)
• Scalability
• Data estate size and growth rate
• Time-to-live (TTL) of reports and views (real-time vs eventual consistency)

Operational requirements​

• Prod and non-prod environments (Dev/Test, QA, Pre-prod, Prod)
• Release frequency (hours / days / months)
• Time to onboard (new customer)
• Licensing
• Cost (Management)
• Manageability

Cost optimization​

• Cost per user
• Target hosting costs as a percentage of revenue
• Pricing model
• Tenancy model

Azure SLAs​

• Familiarize yourself with Azure service-level agreements
• An Azure Service-level Agreement (SLA) can also be read as a minimum service-level objective (SLO).
• An SLA is a financial guarantee, not an absolute guarantee
• Read the SLA details carefully, particularly the definition of "downtime" for each service, which gives important hints about failure modes

For example, in the SLA for Azure SQL Database, "downtime" is defined as:

"The total accumulated Deployment Minutes across all Databases in a given Microsoft Azure subscription during which the Database is unavailable. A minute is considered unavailable for a given Database if all continuous attempts by Customer to establish a connection to the Database within the minute fail."

The Azure SQL Database team expect almost all outages to be transient (brief and non-recurring). Therefore, the retry pattern should be used to continuously retry for up to a minute. This is typical in cloud services; retry has been the default behaviour in ADO.NET since .NET Framework 4.6.1.

External Resources​

Finally, resources such as the Azure Architecture Center, Cloud Adoption and Well-Architected Framework can help with thinking around the design and building blocks of your architecture

• Azure Architecture Center
• Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework
• Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure

Did you know you can contribute to Microsoft documentation (ms docs)?

Suppose you see something not quite right, technically or even if the document's readability doesn't look right! Then, in true community style, you can contribute!

Tip: You can edit it straight from the Github webpage directly, or pressing "." in a Github repository will open up Visual Studio Code in Dev spaces with the markdown linter to help check against best practices from your browser.

See the image below for an example:

Once the pull request is made, it will be reviewed by designated technical document reviewers/product owners at Microsoft. Then your changes will be merged live if successful (and if not, the reviewers will let you know why and what changes could be made)!

• Microsoft Docs contributor guide overview

If you don't want to make the edit yourself, you can also raise an issue and give your feedback by linking to the document, and this will then be worked on by someone to review, contact the relevant product owners, and amended.

Try to be as concise as possible, as people reading it may not have the same experience as you!