What is Azure Resource Graph?

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.
• Query changes made to resource properties.

In this documentation, you review each feature in detail.

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.
• View the last 14 days of resource configuration changes to see which properties changed and when.

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.

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.

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).

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:

• Azure CLI
• Azure PowerShell
• REST API

Alerts integration with Log Analytics

You can create alert rules by using either Azure Resources Graph queries or integrating Log Analytics with Azure Resources Graph queries through Azure Monitor. Both methods can be used to create alerts for Azure resources. For examples, go to Quickstart: Create alerts with Azure Resource Graph and Log Analytics.

Run queries with Power BI connector

The Azure Resource Graph Power BI connector runs queries at the tenant level but you can change the scope to subscription or management group. The Power BI connector has an optional setting to return all records if your query results have more than 1,000 records. For more information, go to Quickstart: Run queries with the Azure Resource Graph Power BI connector.

Next steps

• Learn more about the query language.
• See the language in use in Starter queries.
• See advanced uses in Advanced queries.