Platform Subscriptions and Permissions

This section details the prerequisites for the platform subscriptions.

You will need to choose the parent management group for your Platform landing zone structure to sit under. This could be the Tenant Root Group or a new management group you create under there if preferred.

Warning

If a parent management group other than Tenant Root Group is chosen, then you must move the 4 platform subscriptions into that management group before proceeding.

We recommend setting up 4 subscriptions for Platform landing zone. These are management, identity, connectivity, and security. See our advanced scenarios section for alternatives.

• Management: This is used to deploy the bootstrap and management resources, such as log analytics and automation accounts.
• Identity: This is used to deploy the identity resources, such as Azure AD and Microsoft Entra Domain Services (formerly Azure AD DS) .
• Connectivity: This is used to deploy the hub networking resources, such as virtual networks and firewalls.
• Security: This is used to deploy Sentinel and other security related resources.

You can read more about the management, identity, connectivity, and security subscriptions in the Landing Zone docs.

To create the subscriptions you will need access to a billing agreement. The following links detail the permissions required for each type of agreement:

• Enterprise Agreement (EA)
• Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA)

Once you have the access required, create the four subscriptions following your desired naming convention.

Take note of the subscription id of each subscription as we will need them later.

If your 4 platform subscriptions are not currently under the management group you chose in step 1, you will need to move them there. This is required for the bootstrap to work correctly.

This can be done via the Portal or using the Azure CLI.

You need either an Azure User Account or Service Principal with the following permissions to run the bootstrap:

Bicep (AVM), Bicep Classic, and Terraform all require the following permissions:

• Owner on your chosen parent management group.
  • Owner is required because this account grants permissions to the identities that run the management group deployment. Those identities are granted only the permissions they need.
• Owner on each of your 4 Platform landing zone subscriptions.

The new Bicep (AVM) framework has one additional requirement:

• User Access Administrator at that root / tenant level.
  • User Access Administrator is required for the same reason: this account delegates access to the identities that run the management group deployment using least privilege.

Information

Access at the tenant root is currently required due to a bug within ARM, and is being investigated by Microsoft.

For simplicity, we recommend using a User account since this is a one off process that you are unlikely to repeat.

Warning

Remember, if a parent management group other than Tenant Root Group is chosen, then you must move the 3 platform subscriptions into that management group before proceeding.

1. Open a new PowerShell Core (pwsh) terminal.
2. Run az login.
3. You’ll be redirected to a browser to login, perform MFA, etc.
4. Find the subscription id of the management subscription you made a note of earlier.
5. Type az account set --subscription "<subscription id of your management subscription>" and hit enter.
6. Type az account show and verify that you are connected to the management subscription.

Follow the instructions in the Service Principal section.