Organize your Azure environment

What you’ll be able to do

Explain the tenant, subscription, resource group, and resource hierarchy.
Select the correct subscription before using Azure CLI.
Create and inspect a resource group with useful tags.

Before you beginAn Azure subscription, permission to create resource groups, and Azure CLI or Azure Cloud Shell. Commands use Bash syntax. Choose a region allowed by your organization.

Get the idea

A structure for your cloud

Think of a tenant as the identity directory and a subscription as a resource-management and billing boundary. Resource groups organize related resources within a subscription. A virtual machine, storage account, or virtual network is an individual resource.

Location and lifecycle

The resource group has a location for its metadata; its resources can have different locations. Group resources that should be managed and retired together. A practice group keeps learning resources separate from production work.

Choose deliberately

Before creating anything, confirm the subscription name and ID. An account with several subscriptions can otherwise deploy to the wrong environment. Tags provide descriptive metadata, such as environment and owner; they do not grant access.

Try it yourself

Sign in locally with az login, or open an authenticated Cloud Shell session. Run the account command below and verify the selected subscription.
If needed, run az account set --subscription YOUR_SUBSCRIPTION_ID using your own subscription ID.
Create the learning resource group. Change eastus if your organization requires another region.
Run the inspection command. Find the name, location, and Environment tag in the output.
Open Resource groups in the Azure portal and locate rg-learningazure. Explain where this group sits in the hierarchy.

Example · commands or prompt

az account show --query "{name:name,id:id}" --output table
az group create --name rg-learningazure --location eastus --tags Environment=Learning
az group show --name rg-learningazure --output json

Check your resultThe portal and CLI both show rg-learningazure in the intended subscription with the Environment=Learning tag.

Finish the lab

Keep this group for later lessons. An empty resource group has no resource usage charges. After the course, inspect its contents before deleting the dedicated learning group.

Quick knowledge check

If you can see a subscription, can you automatically create resources in it?

Reveal the explanation

No. Visibility and write access are different permissions. Azure RBAC determines the operations you can perform at the relevant scope.

Take this with you

Confirm identity, subscription, scope, and region before every deployment.

Go deeper

AI-assisted lesson · Reference links checked October 3, 2026. Exercises are teaching examples; they have not been executed against your Azure subscription.