We want to set up Dev and QA (and later prod) Azure environments. Is there a URL detailing the pros and cons of using a single subscription for all environments?
Or a URL describing "best practice" thinking for this matter?
There is no official documentation about this scenario that I know of, but you can find some people writing about it in personal blogs.
Personally, I think you should use whatever it fits best for your business but you must know the drawbacks of each case before choosing. I don't think there's a rule book for this. I am an Azure consultant, I work with medium-sized to multinational companies,
and I rarely see then separating projects or departments into different subs. I would guess 7/10 don't have more than one sub and they seem to be fine with that.
Here are some things that interest us: we would like to know the monthly cost of each environment (is this breakdown available
in a single subscription?)
Definitely separate subs will make your life easier on this matter since you can generate or organize azure cost reports by subscription.
Are there any technical limitations associated with a single subscription? (e.g. if a single subscription supported no more
than 25 servers that would be a show stopper for us)
There are limitations for a single subscription and you can find the details in the link below but they are usually not a problem especially
for Dev/QA scenarios not even for most production environments although you can always ask Microsoft to increase your limits.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/azure-subscription-service-limits/
Will a single subscription simplify our Administrators daily lives? (we envision a mix of IaaS and PaaS servers). If we start with a
single subscription (say for Dev) can we easily copy those VMs to a new subscription for QA?
A single subscription is easier to manage from an infrastructure point of view but if you need granular permissions for different roles
or departments in your company I wont recommended it. Copying VMs is not hard but it is not easy either, it is like using PowerShell to copy a large file, in this case, a .vhd file, and then you have to use this .vhd to create a VM on the destination subscription.
You will not want to do it frequently but I know that Microsoft is already working in a way of migrating resources between subs in a practical way. Of course, there are third party tools that makes this job a lot easier but some PaaS services you cannot migrate,
for example, recovery services or media services.
Tl;Dr;
Advantages of multi subs:
+ Can have admins for each sub giving control and visualization to resources they own only
+ Easier to separate costs per departments (subscriptions)
+ Harder to reach subscription service limits
Drawbacks:
- Need VPN between subs for communication case of assets within a virtual network
- Harder to keep control and manage assets
- Takes time to migrate assets like Virtual Machines. Some you can't migrate except by exporting the data somehow.
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Edited by
Bruno N. L. Faria
Saturday, August 29, 2015 6:11 PM
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Proposed as answer by
Sadiqh AhmedMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator
Sunday, August 30, 2015 10:15 AM
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Marked as answer by
edm2
Sunday, August 30, 2015 2:33 PM
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