An Azure practice subscription: one resource group, one budget and a deliberate decision

Moving to pay as you go should be a decision, not a button you click.

What the account is for

The exam does not test building skills. But a little time in the portal makes services easier to tell apart. Microsoft's free account currently offers credit for the first 30 days and some services free for 12 months. Terms change, so read them when you sign up.

Five steps, in order

1. Create the account with your personal Microsoft account and turn on multifactor authentication.
2. Create a budget. In Cost Management, set a small amount with an email alert.
3. Create one resource group for all practice work, and tag it, for example "purpose: study".
4. After each session, delete the resource group. That removes everything inside it.
5. Before the free period ends, decide. Choose on purpose whether to move to pay as you go.

Step 5 deserves care. A virtual machine left running inside a group you forgot to delete can start billing once you continue with pay as you go. Check what is still running first.

Five portal tasks

Notice how the lock task makes the lock, policy and RBAC contrast concrete: you try to delete and the lock stops you.

Why one resource group helps

The resource group is the unit you can delete. Putting everything you build into a single, tagged group means one deletion removes the lot. That also teaches the hierarchy from the exam map, because you see subscriptions containing resource groups containing resources.

A weekly check

Once a week open Cost Management and check the budget alert. Work only in subscriptions you own or are authorised to use.

Notes worth keeping

Write two lines for each task: what you did and what you would tell a colleague. After you pass, a resource group with tags, a budget, a lock and a policy is a small project you can describe in an interview.

Check that the deletion worked

Before you close each session, open the resource group list and confirm the practice group is gone. Check the cost view a day later, and treat a line you do not recognise as a reason to stop and find it.