Need a way to change every tag with a given value to another across subscriptions

Question

Need a way to change every tag with a given value to another across subscriptions

Jonathan Garcia 1

For example, if I have "CostCenter" tag with value "XYZ", how would I change all of the resources/resource groups with "XYZ" to "ABC"?

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Answer 1

@Jonathan Garcia Welcome to Microsoft Q & A Community Forum. You can use Azure Policy to modify your tags. Here is a sample policy for your reference.

{  
    "properties": {  
        "displayName": "Add or replace a tag on resource groups",  
        "mode": "All",  
        "description": "Adds or replaces the specified tag and value when any resource group is created or updated. Existing resource groups can be remediated by triggering a remediation task.",  
        "metadata": {  
            "category": "Tags"  
        },  
        "parameters": {  
            "tagName": {  
                "type": "String",  
                "metadata": {  
                    "displayName": "Tag Name",  
                    "description": "Name of the tag, such as 'environment'"  
                }  
            },  
            "tagValue": {  
                "type": "String",  
                "metadata": {  
                    "displayName": "Tag Value",  
                    "description": "Value of the tag, such as 'production'"  
                }  
            }  
        },  
        "policyRule": {  
            "if": {  
                "allOf": [{  
                        "field": "type",  
                        "equals": "Microsoft.Resources/subscriptions/resourceGroups"  
                    },  
                    {  
                        "field": "[concat('tags[', parameters('tagName'), ']')]",  
                        "notEquals": "[parameters('tagValue')]"  
                    }  
                ]  
            },  
            "then": {  
                "effect": "modify",  
                "details": {  
                    "roleDefinitionIds": [  
                        "/providers/microsoft.authorization/roleDefinitions/b24988ac-6180-42a0-ab88-20f7382dd24c"  
                    ],  
                    "operations": [{  
                        "operation": "addOrReplace",  
                        "field": "[concat('tags[', parameters('tagName'), ']')]",  
                        "value": "[parameters('tagValue')]"  
                    }]  
                }  
            }  
        }  
    }  
}

References :

Jonathan Garcia 1 Reputation point

2022-02-25T18:29:00.67+00:00

I don't want to make all of my "CostCenter" tags the same, just something as a one time change XYZ to ABC. Would this still be the right way to go versus some sort of script?

To be transparent, I currently use a tag of "DevOwnerEmail" for all of my resources, but as employees get promoted or leave the company.. then I need to switch the email address of the old owner to a new email address. But sometimes this change needs to take place for dozens of resources, if not more.
SwathiDhanwada-MSFT 18,996 Reputation points Moderator

2022-03-07T07:00:33.827+00:00

@Jonathan Garcia Yes you could that using PowerShell Command to update the specific resources using a script. You can use below commands to achieve your requirement.

Get-AzResource - To retrieve the resources from azure

Update-AzTag -- To update the existing tags within the subscription.

My suggestion would be to use Azure Policy. As you mentioned whenever employees change, you need to update the email address of the tag. Azure Policy audits the resources and checks if the resources are complaint or not and you can easily update the existing resources using remediation task. New resources will updated automatically with the tag during its deployment.

Even though its a one time task, with PowerShell it wouldn't be easy to evaluate whether the resources are updated and also its doesn't keep an eye on newly created resources.

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Need a way to change every tag with a given value to another across subscriptions

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