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For automation accounts, is using the azure resource graph faster than powershell cmdlets?

Looking at several powershell scripts written in an Azure Automation Account, is it generally faster to use the Azure Resource Graph over the Azure Powershell cmdlets to update all resources?

Solution

  • Azure Resource Graph is the service you can use to query some resources in Azure and their basic properties.

    Using Azure PowerShell against one resource group is easy, but things can get more complexes when you need to query resources over multiple resources groups or subscriptions. Azure Resource Graph is an exploration tool designed to query different kinds of resources across an Azure tenant efficiently.

    You will not have the same result as in an Azure PowerShell Query, but you will get the result faster across your subscriptions or a subset of subscriptions.

    You can install this module using the following command -

    Install-Module -Name Az.ResourceGraph -Scope CurrentUser

    And the query language used by Resource Graph is Kusto Query Language (KQL), the same you use in Azure Data Explorer or Azure Monitor.

    Note that you will not get a collection of objects like with PowerShell with full detail for each object, but a tabular result with a limited number of data.

    I would suggest to read the Get started with Azure Resource Graph and PowerShell, Microsoft Azure Resource Graph is a Powerful Tool and What's the difference between Azure AD Graph, Azure Resource Graph and Microsoft Graph documents for more information.