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Export Azure Policy resources

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This article provides information on how to export your existing Azure Policy resources. Exporting your resources is useful and recommended for backup, but is also an important step in your journey with Cloud Governance and treating your policy-as-code. Azure Policy resources can be exported through REST API, Azure CLI, and Azure PowerShell.

Note

The portal experience for exporting definitions to GitHub was deprecated in April 2023.

Export with Azure CLI

Azure Policy definitions, initiatives, and assignments can each be exported as JSON with Azure CLI. Each of these commands uses a name parameter to specify which object to get the JSON for. The name property is often a GUID and isn't the displayName of the object.

Here's an example of getting the JSON for a policy definition with name of VirtualMachineStorage:

az policy definition show --name 'VirtualMachineStorage'

Export with Azure PowerShell

Azure Policy definitions, initiatives, and assignments can each be exported as JSON with Azure PowerShell. Each of these cmdlets uses a Name parameter to specify which object to get the JSON for. The Name property is often a GUID (Globally Unique Identifier) and isn't the displayName of the object.

Here's an example of getting the JSON for a policy definition with Name (as mentioned previously, GUID) of d7fff7ea-9d47-4952-b854-b7da261e48f2:

Get-AzPolicyDefinition -Name 'd7fff7ea-9d47-4952-b854-b7da261e48f2' | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 10

Export to CSV with Resource Graph in Azure Portal

Azure Resource Graph gives the ability to query at scale with complex filtering, grouping and sorting. Azure Resource Graph supports the policy resources table, which contains policy resources such as definitions, assignments and exemptions. Review our sample queries. The Resource Graph explorer portal experience allows downloads of query results to CSV using the "Download to CSV" toolbar option.

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