Tutorial: Grant a user access to Azure resources using Azure PowerShell

Article
02/14/2024

Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC) is the way that you manage access to Azure resources. In this tutorial, you grant a user access to view everything in a subscription and manage everything in a resource group using Azure PowerShell.

In this tutorial, you learn how to:

Grant access for a user at different scopes
List access
Remove access

If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin.

Note

We recommend that you use the Azure Az PowerShell module to interact with Azure. To get started, see Install Azure PowerShell. To learn how to migrate to the Az PowerShell module, see Migrate Azure PowerShell from AzureRM to Az.

Prerequisites

To complete this tutorial, you will need:

Permissions to create users in Microsoft Entra ID (or have an existing user)
Azure Cloud Shell
Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK

Role assignments

In Azure RBAC, to grant access, you create a role assignment. A role assignment consists of three elements: security principal, role definition, and scope. Here are the two role assignments you will perform in this tutorial:

Security principal	Role definition	Scope
User (RBAC Tutorial User)	Reader	Subscription
User (RBAC Tutorial User)	Contributor	Resource group (rbac-tutorial-resource-group)

Role assignments for a user

Create a user

To assign a role, you need a user, group, or service principal. If you don't already have a user, you can create one.

In Azure Cloud Shell, create a password that complies with your password complexity requirements.
```
$PasswordProfile = @{ Password = "<Password>" }
```

Create a new user for your domain using the New-MgUser command.

New-MgUser -DisplayName "RBAC Tutorial User" -PasswordProfile $PasswordProfile `
   -UserPrincipalName "[email protected]" -AccountEnabled:$true -MailNickName "rbacuser"

DisplayName        Id                                   Mail UserPrincipalName
-----------        --                                   ---- -----------------
RBAC Tutorial User 11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111      [email protected]

Create a resource group

You use a resource group to show how to assign a role at a resource group scope.

Get a list of region locations using the Get-AzLocation command.
```
Get-AzLocation | select Location
```
Select a location near you and assign it to a variable.
```
$location = "westus"
```

Create a new resource group using the New-AzResourceGroup command.

New-AzResourceGroup -Name "rbac-tutorial-resource-group" -Location $location

ResourceGroupName : rbac-tutorial-resource-group
Location          : westus
ProvisioningState : Succeeded
Tags              :
ResourceId        : /subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/resourceGroups/rbac-tutorial-resource-group

Grant access

To grant access for the user, you use the New-AzRoleAssignment command to assign a role. You must specify the security principal, role definition, and scope.

Get the ID of your subscription using the Get-AzSubscription command.

Get-AzSubscription

Name     : Pay-As-You-Go
Id       : 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
TenantId : 22222222-2222-2222-2222-222222222222
State    : Enabled

Save the subscription scope in a variable.

$subScope = "/subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"

Assign the Reader role to the user at the subscription scope.

New-AzRoleAssignment -SignInName [email protected] `
  -RoleDefinitionName "Reader" `
  -Scope $subScope

RoleAssignmentId   : /subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/providers/Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/44444444-4444-4444-4444-444444444444
Scope              : /subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
DisplayName        : RBAC Tutorial User
SignInName         : [email protected]
RoleDefinitionName : Reader
RoleDefinitionId   : acdd72a7-3385-48ef-bd42-f606fba81ae7
ObjectId           : 11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111
ObjectType         : User
CanDelegate        : False

Assign the Contributor role to the user at the resource group scope.

New-AzRoleAssignment -SignInName [email protected] `
  -RoleDefinitionName "Contributor" `
  -ResourceGroupName "rbac-tutorial-resource-group"

RoleAssignmentId   : /subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/resourceGroups/rbac-tutorial-resource-group/providers/Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/33333333-3333-3333-3333-333333333333
Scope              : /subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/resourceGroups/rbac-tutorial-resource-group
DisplayName        : RBAC Tutorial User
SignInName         : [email protected]
RoleDefinitionName : Contributor
RoleDefinitionId   : b24988ac-6180-42a0-ab88-20f7382dd24c
ObjectId           : 11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111
ObjectType         : User
CanDelegate        : False

List access

To verify the access for the subscription, use the Get-AzRoleAssignment command to list the role assignments.

Get-AzRoleAssignment -SignInName [email protected] -Scope $subScope

RoleAssignmentId   : /subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/providers/Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/22222222-2222-2222-2222-222222222222
Scope              : /subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
DisplayName        : RBAC Tutorial User
SignInName         : [email protected]
RoleDefinitionName : Reader
RoleDefinitionId   : acdd72a7-3385-48ef-bd42-f606fba81ae7
ObjectId           : 11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111
ObjectType         : User
CanDelegate        : False

In the output, you can see that the Reader role has been assigned to the RBAC Tutorial User at the subscription scope.

To verify the access for the resource group, use the Get-AzRoleAssignment command to list the role assignments.

Get-AzRoleAssignment -SignInName [email protected] -ResourceGroupName "rbac-tutorial-resource-group"

RoleAssignmentId   : /subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/resourceGroups/rbac-tutorial-resource-group/providers/Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/33333333-3333-3333-3333-333333333333
Scope              : /subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/resourceGroups/rbac-tutorial-resource-group
DisplayName        : RBAC Tutorial User
SignInName         : [email protected]
RoleDefinitionName : Contributor
RoleDefinitionId   : b24988ac-6180-42a0-ab88-20f7382dd24c
ObjectId           : 11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111
ObjectType         : User
CanDelegate        : False

RoleAssignmentId   : /subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/providers/Microsoft.Authorization/roleAssignments/22222222-2222-2222-2222-222222222222
Scope              : /subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
DisplayName        : RBAC Tutorial User
SignInName         : [email protected]
RoleDefinitionName : Reader
RoleDefinitionId   : acdd72a7-3385-48ef-bd42-f606fba81ae7
ObjectId           : 11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111
ObjectType         : User
CanDelegate        : False

In the output, you can see that both the Contributor and Reader roles have been assigned to the RBAC Tutorial User. The Contributor role is at the rbac-tutorial-resource-group scope and the Reader role is inherited at the subscription scope.

(Optional) List access using the Azure Portal

To see how the role assignments look in the Azure portal, view the Access control (IAM) blade for the subscription.
View the Access control (IAM) blade for the resource group.

Remove access

To remove access for users, groups, and applications, use Remove-AzRoleAssignment to remove a role assignment.

Use the following command to remove the Contributor role assignment for the user at the resource group scope.

Remove-AzRoleAssignment -SignInName [email protected] `
  -RoleDefinitionName "Contributor" `
  -ResourceGroupName "rbac-tutorial-resource-group"

Use the following command to remove the Reader role assignment for the user at the subscription scope.

Remove-AzRoleAssignment -SignInName [email protected] `
  -RoleDefinitionName "Reader" `
  -Scope $subScope

Clean up resources

To clean up the resources created by this tutorial, delete the resource group and the user.

Delete the resource group using the Remove-AzResourceGroup command.

Remove-AzResourceGroup -Name "rbac-tutorial-resource-group"

Confirm
Are you sure you want to remove resource group 'rbac-tutorial-resource-group'
[Y] Yes  [N] No  [S] Suspend  [?] Help (default is "Y"):

When asked to confirm, type Y. It will take a few seconds to delete.

Delete the user using the Remove-MgUser command.

$User = Get-MgUser -Filter "DisplayName eq 'RBAC Tutorial User'"
Remove-MgUser -UserId $User.Id

Next steps

Assign Azure roles using Azure PowerShell

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