In Azure, tags are a way for you to categorise and organise your services. They are made up of name/value pairs (for example, Department: Finance or Data Classification: Confidential).
Not every Azure service supports tags, but where they are available, they can be extremely useful for:
- Identifying which department should be charged for a set of resources – see the cost management capabilities.
- Recording who owns the resources.
- Marking data classification levels such as Public, Private, Confidential, or Top Secret.
- Meeting other governance or regulatory requirements – see compliance elements from Microsoft Defender for Cloud.
It’s important to note that tags are not automatically inherited. Adding a tag to a resource group will not automatically apply it to the resources inside.
However, you can use Azure Policy to add tags automatically to resources, ensuring consistent labelling.
You may also see a recommendation from Azure Advisor suggesting that you Enable Inherit a tag from resource groups to make your tag management more consistent.
Tags are often used alongside Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to give the right people visibility and control over specific sets of resources.
Want to go deeper?
This is just one piece of the bigger Azure puzzle. In my AZ-900 Microsoft Azure Fundamentals course, I walk you through these concepts in detail with practical examples, visuals, and real-world tips. It’s designed to help you pass the exam and use Azure with confidence. Alternatively, please go back to our list of AZ-900 requirements.
Please click here to find out more about Microsoft’s AZ-900 exam.
