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 will usually refuse to provide support for them. Consequently Basic/Free SKUs should never be used for production workloads.
Rationale:
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
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
NOTE: Nessus has not performed this check. Please review the benchmark to ensure target compliance.
Solution
Each artifact has its own process for upgrading from basic to standard SKU's and this should be followed if required.
Default Value:
Policy should enforce standard SKUs for the following artifacts:
Public IP Addresses
Network Load Balancers
REDIS Cache
SQL PaaS Databases
VPN Gateways