Lab 00 – Azure Portal Navigation: Hands-On Exploration

Real-Life Scenario

Company: Contoso Ltd

You are a new Azure administrator at Contoso, a mid-sized financial services company. Your manager has just given you your first task: "We're moving our on-premises applications to Azure. Before we start building, I need you to get familiar with the Azure Portal. Understand how to organize our resources, find Azure services, and manage costs. Here are the credentials for our dev subscription."

Your mission in this lab is to become comfortable navigating the Azure Portal so you can confidently help the team set up infrastructure in coming labs.

Objectives

1. Create a Resource Group (the logical container for all lab resources)
2. Navigate the Azure Portal using search, favorites, and the menu
3. Understand subscriptions, scopes, and resource organization
4. Explore Azure services by category
5. Use the Cloud Shell and portal help features
6. Apply resource tagging for cost tracking
7. Understand the relationship between Resource Groups and resources

Prerequisites

1. An Azure subscription (free trial, MSDN, or pay-as-you-go)
2. Signed in to portal.azure.com
3. Modern web browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari)

Estimated Time

45-60 minutes

Part 1 – Create a Resource Group

A Resource Group is a logical container that holds related Azure resources. Nearly every lab in this course starts by creating one. In this case, we'll create rg-az104-lab00 to hold our lab resources.

Step 1: Start Creating a Resource Group

1. Go to portal.azure.com.
2. In the Search bar (at the top of every page), type resource groups.
3. Select Resource groups from the dropdown results.
4. Click + Create.

Step 2: Fill in the Basics

1. Subscription: select your subscription (e.g., "Azure subscription 1").
2. Resource group name: rg-az104-lab00
3. Region: East US (or your preferred region — this is where the RG metadata is stored).
4. Click Review + create.

Step 3: Review and Create

1. Confirm the settings look correct.
2. Click Create.
3. You'll see a notification: "Deployment is in progress" → "Your deployment is complete."

Verification: Go to Home > Resource groups (or search for Resource groups again). You should see rg-az104-lab00 listed with status "Succeeded".

Part 2 – Explore the Azure Portal Layout

Now that we have a Resource Group, let's explore the portal's key features.

The Portal Home Page

1. Click Home in the left sidebar (or the AZ-104 Learning Hub logo at the top).
2. Observe:

- Favorites section (top left) — add services here for quick access

- Create a resource button

- Recently accessed resources

- Resource groups card

The Search Bar (Your Most Powerful Tool)

The Search bar (at the very top) is the fastest way to get anywhere in the Azure Portal.

1. Click the search bar and type virtual machines.
2. See the dropdown with:

- Virtual machines (the service)

- Suggestions for related content

1. Don't click — just observe. The search bar knows about services, resources, documentation, and settings.

Key tip for exams and labs: Every lab instruction that says "Go to \" means "use the Search bar to find that service."

Adding to Favorites

1. Search for virtual machines and select it from the dropdown.
2. You're now on the Virtual machines page. On the left sidebar, find the Virtual machines menu item.
3. Hover over it and click the star icon to add it to Favorites.
4. Go Home. You should now see Virtual machines in your Favorites section at the top.

Why Favorites? Frequently-used services appear in the left sidebar without having to search.

Part 3 – Understand Subscriptions and Scopes

Scope is a foundational concept in Azure. Resources exist within a hierarchy:

Tenant (your organization)
↓
Management Group (optional, for large organizations)
↓
Subscription (billing boundary, the main organizing unit)
↓
Resource Group (logical container for related resources)
↓
Resource (VMs, storage accounts, databases, etc.)

View Your Subscription

1. Search for subscriptions.
2. Click Subscriptions from the results.
3. You should see your subscription listed. Click on it.
4. Observe:

- Subscription ID (a unique identifier)

- State (should be "Enabled")

- Cost Management tile (shows your spending)

1. Click Cost Management (or search for it) and explore:

- Cost Analysis — see your spending over time

- Budgets — set alerts if you exceed a threshold (useful for managing free trial spend)

Understand Scopes in the Portal

Scopes determine what resources you can see and manage. RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) is also scoped — an admin role at the subscription level grants different permissions than at the resource group level.

1. Navigate to your rg-az104-lab00 resource group.
2. Click Access control (IAM) on the left sidebar.
3. Click Role assignments.
4. You should see at least one role assignment (yourself, with Owner or similar role).
5. Note the Scope column — it shows the resource group scope (/subscriptions/.../resourceGroups/rg-az104-lab00).

Key concept: The same user can have different roles at different scopes. For example:

1. You might be "Owner" of rg-az104-lab00 (can do anything in that RG)
2. But only "Reader" at the subscription level (can view everything, but not change anything outside the RG)

Part 4 – Find Azure Services by Category

Azure has 200+ services. The portal organizes them by category. Let's explore.

Browse Services by Category

1. Click Create a resource on the Home page (or search for create a resource).
2. You'll see a page with categories on the left:

- Compute (VMs, containers, serverless)

- Storage (disks, blob storage, queues)

- Networking (VNets, load balancers, firewalls)

- Databases (SQL, Cosmos DB, MySQL)

- Analytics (big data, machine learning)

- And more...

1. Click Compute.
2. You'll see resources like:

- Virtual Machines

- App Service

- Azure Container Registry

- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

1. Each one has a description. This is useful for exam prep — spend time understanding what each service does.

Find a Specific Service

1. On the Create a resource page, search for storage account in the top search box.
2. You'll see Storage account listed.
3. Click on it (but don't create one yet).
4. You'll see a description: "Create a cloud storage account..."
5. Click Create to see the creation wizard (we'll use this in Part 5).

Part 5 – Create a Storage Account (Understanding Blades and Tabs)

A "blade" is the portal's term for a panel/page that slides in or opens. Most creation wizards have multiple tabs: Basics, Networking, Advanced, Tags, Review + create.

Create a Storage Account

1. Search for storage account > Create.
2. Basics tab:

- Subscription: your subscription

- Resource group: select rg-az104-lab00

- Storage account name: stcontoso (e.g., stcontoso260615 for 2026-06-15; storage account names must be globally unique and lowercase)

- Region: East US

- Performance: Standard

- Redundancy: Locally-redundant storage (LRS)

1. Click Next: Networking (or click Next > to skip to the next tab).
2. Networking tab:

- Leave defaults for now (we'll cover networking in Module 04).

1. Click Next: Advanced.
2. Advanced tab:

- Leave defaults.

1. Click Next: Tags.

Part 6 – Apply Resource Tags

Tags are key-value pairs that help organize and track resources. At Contoso, you might tag resources with:

1. Environment: Development or Production
2. CostCenter: Finance or Sales
3. Owner: alice.lee@contoso.com

Add Tags to the Storage Account

1. You're now on the Tags tab.
2. Add the following tags:

- Key: Environment | Value: Development

- Key: CostCenter | Value: Lab

- Key: Owner | Value:

1. Click Review + create.

Part 7 – Review and Create

The Review + create tab is your last chance to verify everything before Azure provisions the resource.

1. You're on the Review + create tab.
2. Review:

- Storage account name

- Resource group: rg-az104-lab00

- Region: East US

- Tags (scroll down to see them)

1. Click Create.
2. You'll see "Deployment is in progress" → "Your deployment is complete."
3. Click Go to resource to open the storage account.

Explore the Storage Account Blade

1. You're now viewing the storage account's Overview blade.
2. On the left sidebar, click different sections:

- Overview: summary of the resource

- Access keys: credentials to access the storage account (keep these secret!)

- Configuration: settings like HTTPS requirement

- Monitoring: performance metrics

- Cost Management: estimated costs

1. This structure (Overview, Settings, Monitoring, etc.) is common across all Azure resources.

Part 8 – Use the Cloud Shell and Portal Help

Open the Cloud Shell

1. At the top right of the portal, find the terminal icon (>_).
2. Click it. A terminal panel slides up from the bottom of your browser.
3. Select Bash (or PowerShell if you prefer).
4. First time? You'll be prompted to create a storage account for Cloud Shell. Click Create storage.
5. Wait a few moments for the terminal to initialize. You'll see user@cloudshell:~$.

Run a Command in Cloud Shell

1. Type:

``bash

`

- Keyboard shortcuts: e.g., G + H = go to Home

- G + H = Home

- G + / = Go to resource

- ? = Help

- rg-az104-lab00 (your resource group)

- stcontoso (your storage account)

- Resource group: select rg-az104-lab00

1. Search for Resource groups > select rg-az104-lab00.
2. Click the Overview tab.
3. You'll see:

- rg-prod-webservices (production environment)

- rg-dev-databases (development environment)

- rg-shared-networking (shared resources like VNets)

1. [ ] Created resource group rg-az104-lab00 in East US
2. [ ] Located services using the Search bar
3. [ ] Added a service to Favorites
4. [ ] Viewed your subscription details in Subscriptions
5. [ ] Accessed Access control (IAM) and understood the scope concept
6. [ ] Browsed Azure services by category in Create a resource
7. [ ] Created a storage account with tags
8. [ ] Opened and navigated the Cloud Shell (Bash or PowerShell)
9. [ ] Used the ? help menu and keyboard shortcuts
10. [ ] Found your storage account in All resources
11. [ ] Viewed resources in your Resource Group via Overview

1. Search for Resource groups > select rg-az104-lab00.
2. Click Delete resource group.
3. Confirm by typing the name: rg-az104-lab00.
4. Click Delete.
5. You'll see "Deployment is in progress" → "Your deployment is complete."

Verification: Go to Resource groups. You should no longer see rg-az104-lab00.

1. Each lab starts with "Create a Resource Group named rg-az104-labXX" — you'll know exactly how to do this.
2. Each service (VMs, databases, networking) has a similar structure: Overview, Configuration, Monitoring, etc.
3. Every resource can be tagged, has access control, and belongs to a Resource Group.