🌟 **Azure Lighthouse

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📌 What is Azure Lighthouse?

Azure Lighthouse allows cross-tenant management of Azure resources at scale.
It lets MSPs (Managed Service Providers) or enterprise teams manage multiple customer tenants/subscriptions securely, natively, and at scale from their own tenant.

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🧠 Why Use Azure Lighthouse?

Feature	Benefit
Cross-tenant management	Manage multiple customer environments from one portal
Just-in-time (JIT) access	Reduce standing privileges using PIM integration
RBAC-based access delegation	Granular control over who can do what
Security and compliance	Auditability, least privilege, and MFA enforced
Automation support	ARM, Bicep, Terraform, and REST APIs supported

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🧰 Key Concepts

Term	Description
Managing tenant	The service provider’s tenant (your tenant)
Customer tenant	The tenant you are managing
Delegated resource	Subscription or Resource Group assigned to be managed externally
Authorization	RBAC roles assigned during delegation (e.g., Reader, Contributor, etc.)

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⚙️ Setup Overview

🪄 Option 1: Portal-Based (Manual)

1. Go to Azure Lighthouse > Service Providers

2. Click Add customer

3. Choose subscription/resource group

4. Assign RBAC roles

5. Customer must accept the delegation

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🧱 Option 2: Programmatic (ARM/Bicep)

ARM Template Example

{
  "properties": {
    "authorizations": [
      {
        "principalId": "<objectId-of-user-or-group>",
        "roleDefinitionId": "/providers/Microsoft.Authorization/roleDefinitions/<role-guid>",
        "principalIdDisplayName": "DevOps Engineer"
      }
    ],
    "managedByTenantId": "<managing-tenant-id>"
  }
}

Deploy via CLI

az deployment create \
  --name lighthouse-delegation \
  --location eastus \
  --template-file delegation.json \
  --parameters principalId=<user/group ID> roleDefinitionId=<role-id> managedByTenantId=<your-tenant-id>

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🌍 Terraform Example

resource "azurerm_lighthouse_definition" "example" {
  name                = "my-lighthouse-def"
  scope               = azurerm_subscription.primary.id
  managing_tenant_id  = "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
  description         = "Lighthouse access for DevOps team"

  authorization {
    principal_id       = "12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789abc"
    role_definition_id = "b24988ac-6180-42a0-ab88-20f7382dd24c" # Contributor
  }
}

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🛠 Use Cases

Use Case	Example
Managed Service Provider (MSP)	Manage multiple customer environments from one console
Multi-team internal access	Central IT manages many business unit subscriptions securely
DevOps-as-a-Service	Your team manages customer pipelines, infra, monitoring centrally
Security Auditing	Give read-only (RBAC) access to auditors without full trust delegation

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🔒 Security Features

Feature	Azure Lighthouse
Role-based Access Control (RBAC)	✅ Granular and scoped
Azure AD Conditional Access	✅ Enforce MFA, location policies
Just-in-time access (PIM)	✅ Via Azure AD Privileged Identity Mgmt
Audit Logs	✅ Cross-tenant activity tracked in Azure

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🤝 Azure Lighthouse vs AWS Resource Access Manager (RAM)

Feature	Azure Lighthouse	AWS RAM
Cross-tenant resource access	✅ Full RBAC, native delegation	⚠️ Only limited resource types (VPC, FSx)
Fine-grained permissions	✅ RBAC + PIM + Conditional Access	⚠️ IAM-based, but not as flexible
Multi-subscription management	✅ Native in Azure Portal/CLI	❌ Not directly centralized
MSP / external party support	✅ Built-in for service providers	❌ Needs Org-level trust or workarounds
GitOps and DevOps automation	✅ ARM, Bicep, Terraform, REST, PowerShell	⚠️ Only limited CloudFormation support

📌 Conclusion: Azure Lighthouse is more powerful for centralized cross-tenant access and DevOps automation than AWS RAM.

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📊 Monitoring and Auditing

Use Azure Monitor, Activity Logs, and Log Analytics to:

• View cross-tenant activity logs

• Track who accessed which resource

• Monitor compliance of managed environments

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🔍 Azure Lighthouse vs AWS Organizations

Feature/Concept	Azure Lighthouse	AWS Organizations
🔑 Purpose	Delegate resource access across tenants (MSP-focused)	Account management and centralized billing/governance
🧩 Scope	Cross-tenant (customer → service provider)	Intra-org (within same AWS org accounts)
🔐 Access Control	RBAC delegation (Contributor, Reader, etc.) across tenants	SCPs (Service Control Policies), IAM Roles within Org Units
🧑‍🔧 Use Case	MSP managing multiple customer environments securely	Large enterprise managing multiple internal AWS accounts
💰 Billing Management	❌ No billing features	✅ Consolidated billing, cost management
📊 Policy and Security Mgmt	Delegated via RBAC, PIM, Conditional Access	SCPs, Guardrails, central config enforcement
🔁 Trust Model	Explicit delegation by customer (they retain ownership)	Implicit trust under same AWS Org root
⚙️ Automation Support	✅ ARM, Bicep, Terraform, REST, PowerShell	✅ CloudFormation, AWS CLI, Terraform
🧾 Auditability	✅ Delegated access, full logs in managing tenant	✅ CloudTrail logs per account
🧑‍💻 Target Audience	MSPs, Partners, Multi-Tenant DevOps	Enterprises managing many business unit AWS accounts

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🧠 Summary

🔧 Use Case	Use
Managing customers’ Azure environments	✅ Azure Lighthouse
Managing multiple internal AWS accounts	✅ AWS Organizations
Consolidated billing and budgets	✅ AWS Organizations
Secure cross-tenant DevOps/Monitoring	✅ Azure Lighthouse

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🔄 Analogy

Scenario	Azure Equivalent	AWS Equivalent
Partner managing multiple client tenants	Azure Lighthouse	❌ No direct equivalent
Company managing multiple internal accounts	Management Groups + Policy	✅ AWS Organizations

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✅ Conclusion:

• Azure Lighthouse ≠ AWS Organizations

• Azure Lighthouse is like giving external access to a customer's environment in a controlled, auditable way.

• AWS Organizations is like managing your own family of accounts under one umbrella.

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