7.1.5 Ensure that SKU Basic/Consumption is not used on artifacts that need to be monitored (Particularly for Production Workloads)

Information

The use of Basic or Free SKUs in Azure whilst cost effective have significant limitations in terms of what can be monitored and what support can be realized from Microsoft. Typically, these SKU's do not have a service SLA and Microsoft may refuse to provide support for them. Consequently Basic/Free SKUs should never be used for production workloads.

Typically, production workloads need to be monitored and should have an SLA with Microsoft, using Basic SKUs for any deployed product will mean that that these capabilities do not exist.

The following resource types should use standard SKUs as a minimum.

- Public IP Addresses
- Network Load Balancers
- REDIS Cache
- SQL PaaS Databases
- VPN Gateways

NOTE: Nessus has not performed this check. Please review the benchmark to ensure target compliance.

Solution

Each resource has its own process for upgrading from basic to standard SKUs that should be followed if required.

-

Public IP Address:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-network/ip-services/public-ip-upgrade

.

-

Basic Load Balancer:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/load-balancer/load-balancer-basic-upgrade-guidance

.

-

Azure Cache for Redis:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-cache-for-redis/cache-how-to-scale

.

-

Azure SQL Database:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sql/database/scale-resources

.

-

VPN Gateway:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/vpn-gateway/gateway-sku-resize

.

Impact:

The impact of enforcing Standard SKU's is twofold

- There will be a cost increase
- The monitoring and service level agreements will be available and will support the production service.

All resources should be either tagged or in separate Management Groups/Subscriptions

See Also

https://workbench.cisecurity.org/benchmarks/19304

Item Details

Category: SYSTEM AND SERVICES ACQUISITION

References: 800-53|SA-22, CSCv7|2.2

Plugin: microsoft_azure

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