Understanding Azure Tenant ID and Subscriptions

An Azure tenant ID is a unique identifier for your organization's Azure environment, and it's essential to understand how it works with subscriptions.

An Azure tenant ID is a 24-character string that identifies your organization in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD).

Your Azure tenant ID is used to manage access to Azure resources, including subscriptions, and it's also used to authenticate users and services.

Azure subscriptions are the billing and management units for your Azure resources, and they're tied to your tenant ID.

Each subscription has a unique ID, and you can have multiple subscriptions under a single tenant ID.

Finding Azure Tenant ID can be a straightforward process. You can find it through the Azure portal, PowerShell, or CLI.

To find Azure Tenant ID through the Azure portal, sign in to the Azure portal and navigate to Azure Active Directory. Click on the Overview tab and look for Tenant Information – the Azure tenant ID is displayed. You can also copy the Tenant ID using the Copy to Clipboard option.

Alternatively, you can click on Properties in the left pane to reveal your Tenant ID.

If you prefer to use PowerShell, you can install the Azure PowerShell module and run the command Connect-AzAccount. This will sign you in to Azure with your credentials, and the command will show you the Tenant ID among other details.

You can also use the command Get-AzTenant to find Azure Tenant ID with PowerShell.

If you're more comfortable with the command-line interface, you can find Azure Tenant ID with CLI. First, download and install Azure CLI, then launch PowerShell or Command Prompt as administrator and run the command Az login. This will prompt you to install an extension account, after which you can run the command Az account tenant list to find the Azure Tenant ID.

Here's a summary of the methods to find Azure Tenant ID:

An Azure Subscription is a logical container used to provision and manage Azure resources.

Each subscription has its own billing cycle and payment terms, allowing you to manage costs effectively.

A single Azure tenant can manage multiple subscriptions, but each subscription is associated with only one tenant.

To manage permissions and scalability efficiently, it's best practice to have separate subscriptions for production and non-production environments.

Here are the key characteristics of an Azure Subscription:

A subscription in Azure is a logical container for provisioning and managing resources. It's tied to billing and acts as a boundary for resource management and deployment.

Each subscription has its own billing cycle and payment terms, which allows you to manage costs effectively. You should have separate subscriptions for production and non-production environments to manage permissions and scalability efficiently.

A single Azure tenant can manage multiple subscriptions, but each subscription is associated with only one tenant. This means that you can have multiple subscriptions under a single tenant, but not multiple tenants under a single subscription.

Here are the key characteristics of an Azure subscription:

Having multiple subscriptions can be beneficial for managing costs and permissions, but it's essential to understand the relationship between tenants and subscriptions.

Creating a New Azure AD Tenant is a straightforward process that can be done from the Azure AD admin center. You can select Manage tenants, and from there, you can create a new tenant.

To create a new tenant, you'll need to provide some basic information, including an organization (tenant) display name, an initial service domain, the datacenter region to host the tenant, and the type of tenant. The name doesn't need to be unique, but the initial service domain must be.

The process of creating a new tenant takes just a few minutes, and once it exists, you can sign in and begin working with the tenant. You can connect to the tenant with the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK, and Microsoft makes workload packs available for developer tenants to populate the tenant with objects like mailboxes and sites.

Here are the required details to create a new tenant:

The user who creates a tenant becomes its first global administrator, and this doesn't involve creating a new member account in the tenant. Instead, Azure AD creates a guest account for the account that creates the tenant and assigns the global administrator role to the guest account.

Microsoft Entra ID is the new name for Azure Active Directory (AAD), and it's designed to manage user, group, and application access to Azure services.

Entra ID operates entirely in the cloud, which makes it ideal for modern, cloud-first organizations.

Identity management is a key feature of Entra ID, handling both authentication (verifying identity) and authorization (granting access) for Azure resources.

Here are some key identity management features:

User and group management is also a crucial aspect of Entra ID, allowing you to create users and groups within your Entra ID tenant.

Azure Identity Management is a crucial aspect of Azure Tenant ID. Microsoft Entra ID, formerly known as Azure Active Directory (AAD), plays a vital role in managing user, group, and application access to Azure services.

Identity Management involves handling both authentication and authorization for Azure resources. This is done using Entra ID, which operates entirely in the cloud, making it ideal for modern, cloud-first organizations.

Entra ID offers features such as User and Group Management, allowing you to create users and groups within your Entra ID tenant. These identities can be synchronized with your existing on-premises Active Directory using Entra Connect.

To find your Azure Tenant ID with PowerShell, you can use the following commands: Connect-AzAccountGet-AzTenant

These commands will show you details such as your Account Name, Subscription Name, Tenant ID, and Environment. Alternatively, you can run the command Get-AzTenant to see your Tenant ID, Name, Category, and Domains.

To find your Azure Tenant ID via CLI, you'll need to download and install the Azure CLI. You can choose between the current version or the beta version, but I recommend sticking with the current version for production environments.

The first step is to launch PowerShell or the Command Prompt as an administrator and run the command Az login. This will prompt you to sign in to Azure, and if you haven't configured a default browser, you'll need to do that at this point.

Once you've signed in, you can run the command Az account tenant list to find your Tenant ID. You'll be prompted to install an extension account, which you should do, and in the output, you'll see your Azure Tenant ID.

Here's a step-by-step summary of the process:

Azure Active Directory, now known as Microsoft Entra ID, is a cloud-based identity and access management service that plays a crucial role in managing user, group, and application access to Azure services. It handles both authentication and authorization for Azure resources.

Entra ID operates entirely in the cloud, making it ideal for modern, cloud-first organizations. This is a significant departure from traditional Active Directory, which is designed for on-premises environments.

You can create users and groups within your Entra ID tenant, and these identities can be synchronized with your existing on-premises Active Directory using Entra Connect. This allows for a seamless integration of your cloud and on-premises infrastructure.

A single Entra ID tenant is free, but limitations exist through licensing. If you need to accommodate operating units within your company or respect geographical boundaries, you may need to split work across multiple tenants. However, from a Microsoft 365 perspective, a single tenant is the best option for easy collaboration and sharing across the entire organization.

Here's a summary of the key benefits of using Entra ID:

Azure AD Authorization Policy allows administrators to control what users can do through default settings in the Azure AD admin center. These settings can be viewed through the Graph Explorer by querying https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/policies/authorizationPolicy/authorizationPolicy.

The policy includes settings like allowedToCreateTenants, which is currently set to False, meaning users cannot create tenants, but administrators still can if they wish.

Administrators can also access the authorization policy using the Get-MgPolicyAuthorizationPolicy cmdlet, but the app needs the Policy.Read.All permission to do so.

To update the authorization policy, the app must hold the Policy.ReadWrite.Authorization permission.