How to delete resources at scale using the Azure CLI

As an Azure cloud resource administrator, you often have to delete several Azure resources when removing an old environment. Some Azure CLI devTest environments also require periodic cleanup to prevent charges for temporary Azure resources that might persist longer than necessary.

In this Azure CLI sample, you learn the following items:

This sample script was tested in Azure Cloud Shell using a Bash environment. This script was also tested successfully in Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS using Windows Terminal.

Delete Azure resources filtering by name

Use this script to list and delete resource groups that start with a given word.

# Set your subscription
subscriptionID=00000000-0000-0000-0000-00000000
az account set --subscription $subscriptionID

# Set your log file location
logFileLocation="myLogName.txt"

# Get the name of all resource groups that start with 'msdocs'
az group list --query "[?starts_with(name, 'msdocs') == \`true\`].name" -o table

# Delete resource groups without a confirmation prompt (--yes)
# Do not wait for the operation to finish (--no-wait)
echo "Deleting resource groups">$logFileLocation
for rgList in $(az group list --query "[?starts_with(name, 'msdocs') == \`true\`].name" -o tsv); 
do
    echo "deleting resource group $rgList">>$logFileLocation
    az group delete --name $rgList --yes --no-wait
done

# read your log file with Linux "cat" command
clear
cat $logFileLocation

Delete Azure resources filtering by creation date

Use this script to list and delete storage accounts that were created within a date range.

# Set your log file location
logFileLocation="myLogName.txt"

# Set your resource group variable
rgName=<msdocs-rg-0000000>

# Get a list of Azure storage accounts that were created in the last 30 days. Return the results as a table.
saDate=$(date +%F -d "-30days")
az storage account list --resource-group $rgName \
                        --query "[?creationTime >='$saDate'].{saName:name, createdTimeStamp:creationTime}" \
                        --output table

# Delete storage accounts without a confirmation prompt (--yes).
# Do not wait for the operation to finish (--no-wait)
echo "Deleting storage accounts">$logFileLocation
for saList in $(az storage account list --resource-group $rgName \
                        --query "[?creationTime >='$saDate'].{saName:name, createdTimeStamp:creationTime}" \
                        --output tsv);
do
    echo "deleting storage account $saList">>$logFileLocation
    az storage account delete --ids $saList --yes --no-wait
done

# read your log file with Linux "cat" command
clear
cat $logFileLocation

Delete all Azure resources of a type

Delete all Virtual Machines in a resource group

# Set your resource group variable
rgName=<msdocs-rg-0000000>

az group delete -n $rgName --force-deletion-types Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines

See also

• Create Azure resources at scale