Microsoft Azure imposes limits and quotas on how many resources of each type you can provision per Azure Subscription, and even per Azure Region. Some limits are a hard maximum, while others are a soft limit that can be increases upon request. When working with Virtual Machines (VMs), Storage Accounts, Databases, and other resources in the Microsoft Azure cloud you can easily hit up against these limits, so it’s important to know they exist and how to work around them. This article will explain the details around the Limits and Quotas on resources within Microsoft Azure; including tips on how to work around these limits to scale as high as your organization needs.

Azure Subscription Limits

Microsoft Azure is generally thought of as being a limitless and infinitely scalable cloud. Of course we do know that the “Cloud” is really made up of servers, racks, network switches, power supplies, and other computing hardware that makes up any data center. However, the infinitely scalable idea still persists. After all, it really does seem to be limitless when you can spin up a new VM, Storage Account, or other resource in the Microsoft Azure cloud in a few seconds or minutes and get computing.

The hard truth about the cloud is that being made up of real hardware there are in fact limits to it’s scalability. As a result, Microsoft does impose a few limitations to on a “Per Azure Subscription” basis via Subscription Limits and Quotas. Sure you can use multiple subscriptions to essentially get around the limits, but it’s important to first know what they are so you can plan your infrastructure accordingly.

Microsoft does impose a few limitations to on a “Per Azure Subscription” basis via Subscription Limits and Quotas.

Here’s the list of the Azure Subscription limits when you use Azure Resource Manager (ARM) and Azure Resource Groups:

Azure Resource Group Limits

One of the little known facts regarding Limits and Quotas in Microsoft Azure is that even Resource Groups have limits on the number of resources and other things on an individual Resource Group. While these limits are rarely hit, it’s still good to know they exist.

ARM Template / Azure Bicep Template Limits

There are some limits when using Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Templates and Azure Bicep templates to manage Azure resource deployments.

Keep in mind that you can exceed some template limits by using nested templates as a workaround. Nested templates can also be a helpful way to organize larger template deployments to be more manageable too.

Why are there Resource Limits and Quotas?

Azure resource limits and quotas are NOT some arbitrary limits that Microsoft imposes to keep you from fully utilizing the cloud. Microsoft Azure Limits and Quotas protect Microsoft and YOU (the customer) from gross overspending in the cloud by accident. In fact, the “Per Azure Subscription” and “Per Azure Region” limits and quotas are helpful for a couple different reasons.

• Quotas help limit the ability of your Administrators, Developers and other employees from spending far more in the cloud than you’ve budgeted without taking away their flexibility and agility to do their jobs.
• Limits help keep you cloud spending predictable by not allowing you to spin up the resources that could generate a huge monthly bill without you doing it on purpose. This save you and Microsoft money since they’d likely need to refund lots of cloud spending if all customers were allowed to go unchecked.
• Limits help Microsoft throttle the growth of cloud usage; both within individual Azure Regions, as well as Globally across all their datacenter and regions. This allows Microsoft to ensure that individual customers aren’t able to overload any particular Azure Region or data center unexpectedly.

Resource Limits protect YOU from accidentally going bankrupt by generating huge monthly spend before realizing the full cost of your Azure Resources.

Resource Limits aren’t just for benefiting Microsoft. There are some side effects of Azure Resource Limits that help customers of Microsoft Azure better architect their applications and workloads for the cloud; specifically when it comes to “Per Azure Region” maximum limits. These maximum limits can cause you to utilize multiple Azure Regions in certain cases when provisioning resources within a single Azure Subscription. This can have the affect of causing you to spread your workloads across multiple data centers causing you to have a more resilient cloud footprint by not relying on a single data center or Azure Region for all your workloads.

You can view the official list of the limits for Azure Subscriptions and Resources within the official Azure documentation.

Original Article Source: Microsoft Azure Resource and Service Limits and Quotas written by Chris Pietschmann (If you're reading this somewhere other than Build5Nines.com, it was republished without permission.)