Azure naming conventions, simply

A naming convention makes a resource's purpose easy to recognise. Microsoft provides guidance and abbreviations; your organisation chooses the pattern. Azure's service-specific naming rules still apply. Microsoft naming guidance.

Start with one pattern

Use Papliba as an example organisation:

<type>-<workload>-<environment>-<region>-<instance>

id-policy-gha-prod-swc-001

Part	Meaning
id	User-assigned managed identity.
policy-gha	Policy deployment through GitHub Actions.
prod	An operational production service.
swc	Our chosen code for Sweden Central (swedencentral).
001	First instance; keep this value stable.

The resource group can be rg-policy-prod-swc-001. It groups the policy service's resources; the identity name adds its specific role.

A subscription called Platform describes its function. Resources inside it can still have an environment such as prod. The region in an identity's name describes its location, not where it is allowed to access resources.

Choose a small vocabulary

Use dev, test, and prod for environments. Agree on region codes, such as swc for Sweden Central and weu for West Europe. These short codes are team choices.

Reuse Microsoft's resource abbreviations:

Resource	Prefix
Resource group	rg
Managed identity	id
Virtual network / subnet	vnet / snet
Network security group	nsg
Virtual machine	vm
Storage account	st
Key Vault	kv
Function App	func
Log Analytics workspace	log

Microsoft abbreviation reference.

Handle the exceptions

Resource	What changes
Storage account	Only lowercase letters and numbers; 3–24 characters and globally unique. Example: stplbpolprodswca1b2.
Key Vault	Globally unique; 3–24 characters. Use shorter tokens: kv-plb-pol-prod-swc-a1b2.
Windows hostname	Separate from the Azure resource name; keep at most 15 characters. Example: ppolprswc001.
Policy assignment	Use a short purpose key such as pa-winpwd-prod. Management-group assignments allow at most 24 characters for the resource name.
Reserved subnet	Keep required service names such as AzureFirewallSubnet.

Here, plb means Papliba and pol means policy. The suffix is allocated once and checked for availability; it is not regenerated on each deployment. Examples do not reserve globally unique names. Azure naming restrictions.

Put changing details in tags

Keep the name focused on stable purpose. Use tags for ownership and management details:

organization = papliba
workload     = policy
environment  = prod
owner        = platform
managedBy    = terraform

Use managedBy=terraform only when Terraform actually manages the resource. Apply tags explicitly: resources do not inherit their resource group's tags automatically. Azure tags.

Record it as an ADR

An Architecture Decision Record is a short Markdown file in the infrastructure repository. Record:

1. Context: why the team needs a convention.
2. Decision: component order, allowed values, and examples.
3. Exceptions: service limits, reserved names, and existing resources.
4. Consequences: how code generates names and how changes are reviewed.

Apply the decision to new resources. Most Azure resource names cannot be changed in place, so do not recreate working resources just for cosmetic consistency. An ADR documents the rule; infrastructure code and any separately configured Azure Policies enforce it.

For a deployment identity, the next steps are GitHub federation and Azure permissions. A well-named identity alone cannot deploy resources.