Azure Resource Manager (ARM)

Azure Resource Manager (ARM) is the deployment and management service provided by Microsoft Azure for organizing and managing resources in a cloud environment. It serves as a control plane that allows users to create, update, and delete resources such as virtual machines, databases, storage accounts, and more, within Azure subscriptions.

Key features of Azure Resource Manager include:

1. Resource Group Management: ARM enables grouping related resources into logical containers called resource groups. This allows for easier management, monitoring, and billing of resources as a single entity.

2. Template-based Deployment: ARM provides a template-based approach for deploying and managing Azure resources called Azure Resource Manager templates. These templates are JSON files that define the resources and their configurations, allowing for repeatable, consistent deployments.

3. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): ARM integrates with Azure's RBAC system, allowing administrators to control access to resources based on roles and permissions.

4. Deployment Orchestration: ARM facilitates the orchestration of complex deployments involving multiple resources and dependencies. It ensures that resources are provisioned and configured in the correct order and handles rollback in case of failures.

5. Tagging and Metadata: ARM allows users to assign tags to resources for better organization, tracking, and management. Tags can be used for cost allocation, compliance, and other purposes.

Overall, Azure Resource Manager provides a centralized and unified way to manage Azure resources, offering increased efficiency, scalability, and control for cloud deployments.

Regardless of the tool or method that we are using to interact with the Azure platform and Azure resources, the communication happens through a single central endpoint called Azure Resource Manager (ARM). You can think of it as a centralized layer for resource management in Azure

When we make a request for an operation to be performed, using any of the tools that we described earlier, Resource Manager will talk to ''resource providers'' that perform the action we've requested.

Resource providers are services that provide different types of resources. For example, the network resource provider is responsible for network resources (virtual networks, network interfaces, and so on), while the compute resource provider is responsible for compute resources (VMs).