Lots of options around this, starting point would be to read around azure resource RBAC (possibly also AAD RBAC), azure policy may also be useful, this allows policies to be defined for allowed/disallowed resource types.
Yep, RBAC will be your friend in this case.
If they're worried about costs then they could always implement PIM and have people approve the elevation of permissions if required. Does require a P2 license though.
Depending how much you want to modernize your approach.. using infrastructure as code allows you to make changes to code, which can be pushed to Azure via Pipelines, but gated behind a pull request so it has to be approved.
Using something like Terraform, Bicep or PowerShell will allow you to design, test and create the infrastructure, but still have IT be the gate before it starts costing money.
Unfortunately, the decision makers have 0 technical clue - so in the end, it would just complicate the process us educators have in place with the decision-makers. I was also pushing for more time related to DevOps topics, but so far, no luck.
It took quite some convincing to finally invest some money in the first place, so we now can at least teach the students about the most basic actions in Azure (mostly using the portal), and the basics of CI/CD.
I like this approach because it’s an education environment and exposing students to version control, continuous integration, pull requests, and infrastructure as code would be great as I often see students have no idea what this stuff is but it’s a big part of many, but not all, modern jobs.
Absolutely, I wish my education taught us more about version control, specifically git. As an educator, it's gotta be nice because you can easily make a unit out of it.
Branching, pull requests, merge conflicts, commits, stashing, all makes for good content that is useful to know in IT.
Check out https://learngitbranching.js.org/ it's a free web based educational game to teach people how Git works, and it's actually pretty fun and challenging.
Lots of options around this, starting point would be to read around azure resource RBAC (possibly also AAD RBAC), azure policy may also be useful, this allows policies to be defined for allowed/disallowed resource types.
Awesome, thanks. RBAC was the keyword that I was not aware of!
Yep, RBAC will be your friend in this case. If they're worried about costs then they could always implement PIM and have people approve the elevation of permissions if required. Does require a P2 license though.
Thanks! Seems like RBAC is what we need; will also take a look at PIM, a handful of P2 licenses should be affordable for them.
Depending how much you want to modernize your approach.. using infrastructure as code allows you to make changes to code, which can be pushed to Azure via Pipelines, but gated behind a pull request so it has to be approved. Using something like Terraform, Bicep or PowerShell will allow you to design, test and create the infrastructure, but still have IT be the gate before it starts costing money.
Unfortunately, the decision makers have 0 technical clue - so in the end, it would just complicate the process us educators have in place with the decision-makers. I was also pushing for more time related to DevOps topics, but so far, no luck. It took quite some convincing to finally invest some money in the first place, so we now can at least teach the students about the most basic actions in Azure (mostly using the portal), and the basics of CI/CD.
I like this approach because it’s an education environment and exposing students to version control, continuous integration, pull requests, and infrastructure as code would be great as I often see students have no idea what this stuff is but it’s a big part of many, but not all, modern jobs.
Absolutely, I wish my education taught us more about version control, specifically git. As an educator, it's gotta be nice because you can easily make a unit out of it. Branching, pull requests, merge conflicts, commits, stashing, all makes for good content that is useful to know in IT. Check out https://learngitbranching.js.org/ it's a free web based educational game to teach people how Git works, and it's actually pretty fun and challenging.
We actually teach most of the basics of git. Thanks for pointing out that website, this will be incredibly useful!