10 - Remove a policy assignment

It may be simpler to change the enforcement mode of policy assignments rather than removing them altogether. See here for more information.

You may want to remove some policy assignments altogether. In order to do this they need to supply a lib folder to the accelerator.

You can run the following script to setup the lib folder structure:

Windows

$filePath = "c:\accelerator\config\lib\architecture_definitions\alz.alz_architecture_definition.json"
$skipArchitecture = $false
if(Test-Path $filePath) {
  $response = Read-Host "The file $filePath already exists, are you sure you want to overwrite it and lose your changes? Type 'yes' to overwrite it..."
  if($response -ne "yes") {
    $skipArchitecture = $true
  }
}

if(!($skipArchitecture)) {
  New-Item -ItemType "file" $filePath -Force
  (Invoke-WebRequest "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/Azure-Landing-Zones-Library/refs/heads/main/platform/alz/architecture_definitions/alz.alz_architecture_definition.json").Content | Out-File $filePath -Force
}

$archetypes = $("connectivity", "corp", "decommissioned", "identity", "management", "landing_zones", "platform", "root", "sandbox")
foreach($archetype in $archetypes){
    $filePath = "c:\accelerator\config\lib\archetype_definitions\$($archetype).alz_archetype_override.json"
    New-Item -ItemType "file" $filePath -Force
    $policy_assignments = ((Invoke-WebRequest "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/Azure-Landing-Zones-Library/refs/heads/main/platform/alz/archetype_definitions/$($archetype).alz_archetype_definition.json").Content | ConvertFrom-Json).policy_assignments
    $archetype_override = [ordered]@{
      name = "$($archetype)_override"
      base_archetype = $archetype
      policy_assignments_to_remove = $policy_assignments
    }
    ConvertTo-Json $archetype_override -Depth 10 | Out-File $filePath -Force
}

Linux / macOS

$filePath = "/accelerator/config/lib/architecture_definitions/alz.alz_architecture_definition.json"
$skipArchitecture = $false
if(Test-Path $filePath) {
  $response = Read-Host "The file $filePath already exists, are you sure you want to overwrite it and lose your changes? Type 'yes' to overwrite it..."
  if($response -ne "yes") {
    $skipArchitecture = $true
  }
}

if(!($skipArchitecture)) {
  New-Item -ItemType "file" $filePath -Force
  (Invoke-WebRequest "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/Azure-Landing-Zones-Library/refs/heads/main/platform/alz/architecture_definitions/alz.alz_architecture_definition.json").Content | Out-File $filePath -Force
}

$archetypes = $("connectivity", "corp", "decommissioned", "identity", "management", "landing_zones", "platform", "root", "sandbox")
foreach($archetype in $archetypes){
    $filePath = "/accelerator/config/lib/archetype_definitions/$($archetype).alz_archetype_override.json"
    New-Item -ItemType "file" $filePath -Force
    $policy_assignments = ((Invoke-WebRequest "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/Azure-Landing-Zones-Library/refs/heads/main/platform/alz/archetype_definitions/$($archetype).alz_archetype_definition.json").Content | ConvertFrom-Json).policy_assignments
    $archetype_override = [ordered]@{
      name = "$($archetype)_override"
      base_archetype = $archetype
      policy_assignments_to_remove = $policy_assignments
    }
    ConvertTo-Json $archetype_override -Depth 10 | Out-File $filePath -Force
}

The lib folder should contain the following structure (we are showing it nested under the standard accelerator file structure here):

📂accelerator
┣ 📂config
┃ ┣ 📂lib
┃ ┃ ┣ 📂architecture_definitions
┃ ┃ ┃ ┗ 📜alz.alz_architecture_definition.json
┃ ┃ ┗ 📂archetype_definitions
┃ ┃   ┃ 📜connectivity.alz_archetype_override.json
┃ ┃   ┃ 📜corp.alz_archetype_override.json
┃ ┃   ┃ 📜decommissioned.alz_archetype_override.json
┃ ┃   ┃ 📜identity.alz_archetype_override.json
┃ ┃   ┃ 📜management.alz_archetype_override.json
┃ ┃   ┃ 📜landing_zones.alz_archetype_override.json
┃ ┃   ┃ 📜platform.alz_archetype_override.json
┃ ┃   ┃ 📜root.alz_archetype_override.json
┃ ┃   ┗ 📜sandboxes.alz_archetype_override.json
┃ ┃ 📜inputs.yaml
┃ ┗ 📜platform-landing-zone.tfvars
┗ 📂output

The lib folder must be named lib, any other name will not work

The *.alz_archetype_override.json files content should be created based on the library archetypes found here.

By default we have added all the library policy assignments to the policy_assignments_to_remove array.

You can now open each alz_archetype_override.json file in turn and delete any policy assignments you DO NOT wish to remove from the policy_assignments_to_remove array.
If you don’t want to remove any policy assignments from a particular archetype, then you can just delete the whole file.

For example to remove just the Deploy-ASC-Monitoring policy assignment from the root management group archetype, the file would look like this:

{
  "name": "root_override",
  "base_archetype": "root",
  "policy_assignments_to_remove": [
    "Deploy-ASC-Monitoring"
  ]
}

Now for each override file you need to update the alz.alz_architecture_definition.json to use the override archetype.

For example to use the override for root, you need to update the archetypes array and replace with the override archetype name from root to root_override:

{
  "archetypes": [
    "root_override"
  ],
  "display_name": "Azure Landing Zones",
  "exists": false,
  "id": "alz",
  "parent_id": null
},

Now, when deploying the accelerator you need to supply the lib folder as an argument with -starterAdditionalFiles.

10 - Remove a policy assignment

Microsoft Clarity