Azure equivalent of AWS tags?

Solution 1:

Azure doesn't have resource tags. You'd need to implement something on your own e.g. maintain key/value tag list in Table storage (or any other store, really), updating whenever you add/remove a resource. That's something that can be incorporated into CLI/PowerShell scripts, or if you're automating via a program, you can manage tags via SDK calls.

EDIT Oct 2015 My original answer is outdated. Using Azure Resource Manager (ARM) for infrastructure deployments, resources may now be tagged. While these may be applied and queried via CLI/PowerShell, you may also manage tags via the portal. When you open a resource, you will see a "tag" icon in the upper-right. Clicking through, you'll see assigned tags and be able to create new ones.

Here's an example of one of my demo resources:

resource tag editor

You can also pin a resource tag to the dashboard:

resource tag on dashboard

More info on resource tags is here, including instructions for PowerShell and REST API, and a snip from a billing report showing tagged resources.

Solution 2:

Azure now supports tagging on preview (new) portal. https://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/azure-redis-cache-disaster-recovery-to-azure-tagging-support-elastic-scale-for-sqldb-docdb