Managing Azure resource tags using PowerShell

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Baki Onur Okutucu

Onur is a DevOps Engineer and Subject Matter Expert for Azure, and PowerShell. He is the founder of Clouderz Ltd, a cloud consultancy based in London. For 13 years in a row, Microsoft has recognized him as an MVP (Most Valuable Professional). You can follow Onur on Twitter: @BakiOnur.

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In Azure, resource groups let you group and manage resources. Working with resources groups lets us perform some mass operations such as permission control and activity log management. However, it is a big advantage to use resource tags to organize resources. Apply resource tags to resources or resource groups to group them logically.

We can then easily identify and manage resources with tags through PowerShell for automated tasks. Tags also allow us to know which department is using which resources. For example, you could assign a tag named "Finance" to some resources. This way, we can manage all resources belonging to the finance department regardless of which resource group they are in.

The following table shows the default quotas for resources in Azure.

Creating tags using PowerShell

Creating an Azure resource tag is pretty simple. Each tag requires two properties: keys (names) and values.

New-AzureRmTag -Name Company -Value Clouderz
New-AzureRmTag -Name Department -Value Automation
New-AzureRmTag -Name ManagedBy -Value Onur

Get-AzureRmTag -Detailed | select name,values

Listing tags

You can remove tags with this command:

Remove-AzureRmTag -Name Company

Assigning tags to resources or resource groups

After you create a tag, it becomes available in the Azure Portal. There you can assign it to a resource or a resource group.

Tags in Azure Portal

It is important to note that resource tags are not inherited. So applying a tag to a resource group does not automatically apply the resources in that resource group with the tag. If we need to apply the tags to all resources in a resource group, we can either manually apply it for an individual resource or automate the task with PowerShell for multiple resources.

You can execute the following commands to apply a tag to a single resource:

Get-AzureRmResource -ResourceName "TestNIC01" -ResourceGroupName "Onur_Tag_Test" | Set-AzureRmResource -Tag @{Company="Clouderz";Department="Automation"} -Force

Applying a tag to a resource

With the next command, you can get all tag details for a resource.

(Get-AzureRmResource -ResourceName "TestNIC01" -ResourceGroupName "Onur_Tag_Test").Tags

Getting a resource with its tag details

We can use various combinations to manage multiple resources using resource tags with PowerShell. One of the most used scenarios is to get a list of resources tagged with a specific value. In the example below, we will get all resources with a tag named "Company" and a value of "Clouderz." You can customize this code to list resources used by a specific project or a team.

Find-AzureRmResource -TagName "Company" -TagValue "Clouderz" | foreach {
	Get-AzureRmResource -ResourceId $_.resourceid | select name, tags
}

Listing resources with specific tags

Assigning a tag to a resource group is pretty similar:

Get-AzureRmResourceGroup "Onur_Tag_Test" | Set-AzureRmResourceGroup -Tag @{Company="Clouderz";Department="Automation"}

Applying tags to a resource group

It is also possible to assign the same tags for a resource group to all resources within it. In a way, this gives you an inheritance feature for tagged resource groups.

$resourceGroupName="Onur_Tag_Test"
$tags_to_apply=(Get-AzureRmResourceGroup -Name $resourceGroupName).tags
Find-AzureRmResource -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName | foreach {
	Set-AzureRmResource -ResourceId $_.resourceid -Tag $tags_to_apply -Force
}

Applying tags to multiple resources

Listing all tagged resources

Lastly, to get a complete list of resources in a subscription you have tagged, you can use the code below.

$result=@()
$tagkeys=Get-AzureRmTag
foreach($tagkey in $tagkeys) {
	$tagvalues=(Get-AzureRmTag $tagkey.name).values
	foreach($tagvalue in $tagvalues) {
		$result+=Find-AzureRmResource -tag @{$tagkey.name=$tagvalue.name} | select name,resourcegroupname,location,@{label="tagName";expression={$tagkey.name}},@{label="tagValue";expression={$tagvalue.name}}
	}
}
$result | Out-GridView -Title "Azure Resources that have been assigned with tags"

Reporting all tagged resources