Your company has an Azure landing zone with a Management Group named Production-MG, which contains multiple subscriptions. You are designing a governance strategy for a team of system administrators.
The administrators must be able to start, stop, and restart Azure Virtual Machines within all subscriptions under Production-MG. They must not be able to perform any other actions on the virtual machines, such as creating, deleting, or modifying them. You must enforce the principle of least privilege, minimize administrative overhead, and ensure that administrative access is granted only when required for active maintenance tasks.
Which design strategy should you recommend?
- ADefine a custom Azure RBAC role with the assignable scope set to the Production-MG management group and the Actions array configured with explicit read, start, powerOff, and restart permissions. Assign this custom role directly to each administrator's individual Microsoft Entra ID user account at the Production-MG scope, and use Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management (PIM) to configure eligible assignments.
- BDefine a custom Azure RBAC role with the assignable scope set to the Root Management Group. Create a Microsoft Entra ID security group containing the administrators, assign the custom role to the group, and use an Azure Policy definition with a Deny effect at the Production-MG scope to enforce that only those specific virtual machine actions can be performed.
- Define a custom Azure RBAC role with the assignable scope set to the Production-MG management group and the Actions array configured with explicit read, start, powerOff, and restart permissions. Create a Microsoft Entra ID security group containing the administrators, assign the custom role to this group at the Production-MG scope, and configure Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management (PIM) for Azure resources to make the security group members eligible for the role.Answer
- DDefine a custom Azure RBAC role with the assignable scope set to the Production-MG management group and the Actions array configured with explicit read, start, powerOff, and restart permissions. Create a Microsoft Entra ID security group containing the administrators, assign the custom role to this group at the Production-MG scope, and configure Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management (PIM) for Azure resources to make the security group members permanently active in the role.
Answer
Define a custom Azure RBAC role with the assignable scope set to the Production-MG management group and the Actions array configured with explicit read, start, powerOff, and restart permissions. Create a Microsoft Entra ID security group containing the administrators, assign the custom role to this group at the Production-MG scope, and configure Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management (PIM) for Azure resources to make the security group members eligible for the role.
The correct strategy involves defining a custom Azure RBAC role with explicit virtual machine power action permissions scoped to the Production-MG management group. Assigning this role to a Microsoft Entra ID security group at the management group level ensures that all subscriptions underneath inherit the permissions, minimizing administrative overhead. Configuring Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management (PIM) with eligible assignments ensures just-in-time (JIT) access, allowing administrators to activate the role only during active maintenance windows, which complies with the principle of least privilege.
Step-by-Step Solution
Key Concept
Azure RBAC, Management Groups, and Just-In-Time Access Governance