What is Azure Resource Graph?

  • Article

Azure Resource Graph is an Azure service designed to extend Azure Resource Management by providing efficient and performant resource exploration. Resource Graph has the ability to query at scale across a given set of subscriptions so that you can effectively govern your environment. These queries provide the following abilities:

  • Query resources with complex filtering, grouping, and sorting by resource properties.
  • Explore resources iteratively based on governance requirements.
  • Assess the effect of applying policies in a vast cloud environment.

In this documentation, you review each feature in detail.

Note

Azure Resource Graph powers Azure portal's search bar, the new browse All resources experience. It's designed to help customers manage large-scale environments.

Note

This service supports Azure Lighthouse, which lets service providers sign in to their own tenant to manage subscriptions and resource groups that customers have delegated.

How Resource Graph complements Azure Resource Manager

Azure Resource Manager currently supports queries over basic resource fields, specifically:

  • Resource name
  • ID
  • Type
  • Resource Group
  • Subscription
  • Location

Azure Resource Manager also provides facilities for calling individual resource providers for detailed properties one resource at a time.

With Azure Resource Graph, you can access these properties the resource providers return without needing to make individual calls to each resource provider. For a list of supported resource types, review the table and resource type reference. An alternative way to see supported resource types is through the Azure Resource Graph Explorer Schema browser.

With Azure Resource Graph, you can:

Access the properties returned by resource providers without needing to make individual calls to each resource provider.

Note

As a preview feature, some type objects have additional non-Resource Manager properties available. For more information, see Extended properties.

How Resource Graph is kept current

When an Azure resource is updated, Azure Resource Manager notifies Azure Resource Graph about the change. Azure Resource Graph then updates its database. Azure Resource Graph also does a regular full scan. This scan ensures that Azure Resource Graph data is current if there are missed notifications. Or when a resource is updated outside of Azure Resource Manager.

Note

Resource Graph uses a GET to the latest non-preview application programming interface (API) of each resource provider to gather properties and values. As a result, the property expected may not be available. In some cases, the API version used has been overridden to provide more current or widely used properties in the results. See the Show API version for each resource type sample for a complete list in your environment.

The query language

Now that you have a better understanding of what Azure Resource Graph is, let's dive into how to construct queries.

It's important to understand that Azure Resource Graph's query language is based on the Kusto Query Language (KQL) used by Azure Data Explorer.

First, for details on operations and functions that can be used with Azure Resource Graph, see Resource Graph query language. To browse resources, see explore resources.

Permissions in Azure Resource Graph

To use Resource Graph, you must have appropriate rights in Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC) with at least read access to the resources you want to query. No results are returned if you don't have at least read permissions to the Azure object or object group.

Note

Resource Graph uses the subscriptions available to a principal during login. To see resources of a new subscription added during an active session, the principal must refresh the context. This action happens automatically when logging out and back in.

Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell use subscriptions that the user has access to. When you use a REST API, the subscription list is provided by the user. If the user has access to any of the subscriptions in the list, the query results are returned for the subscriptions the user has access to. This behavior is the same as when calling Resource Groups - List because you get resource groups that you can access, without any indication that the result might be partial. If there are no subscriptions in the subscription list that the user has appropriate rights to, the response is a 403 (Forbidden).

Note

In the preview REST API version 2020-04-01-preview, the subscription list may be omitted. When both the subscriptions and managementGroupId properties aren't defined in the request, the scope is set to the tenant. For more information, see Scope of the query.

Throttling

As a free service, queries to Resource Graph are throttled to provide the best experience and response time for all customers. If your organization wants to use the Resource Graph API for large-scale and frequent queries, use portal Feedback from the Resource Graph portal page. Provide your business case and select the Microsoft can email you about your feedback checkbox in order for the team to contact you.

Resource Graph throttles queries at the user level. The service response contains the following HTTP headers:

  • x-ms-user-quota-remaining (int): The remaining resource quota for the user. This value maps to query count.
  • x-ms-user-quota-resets-after (hh:mm:ss): The time duration until a user's quota consumption is reset

For more information, see Guidance for throttled requests.

Running your first query

Azure Resource Graph Explorer, part of Azure portal, enables running Resource Graph queries directly in the Azure portal. Pin the results as dynamic charts to provide real-time dynamic information to your portal workflow. For more information, go to First query with Azure Resource Graph Explorer.

Resource Graph also supports Azure CLI, Azure PowerShell, and REST API. The query is structured the same for each language. Learn how to enable Resource Graph with:

Next steps