Azure resource at the top of the Foundry hierarchy (Microsoft.CognitiveServices/accounts, kind AIServices). It governs model deployments, networking, security, policy and shared connections, while child projects keep teams isolated.
Also called Foundry resource.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains Microsoft Foundry resource in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Hierarchy
Lets report users drill up and down through totals by stacking a dimension's levels in order, for example region, then city, then address, in a semantic model.
- Microsoft.CognitiveServices
Azure OpenAI, Foundry and Foundry Tools accounts are all resources of this provider. Their IDs take the form subscriptions/{id}/resourceGroups/{rg}/providers/..., with no tenant ID anywhere in them.
- Security policy
Implements row-level security for Fabric warehouses or SQL analytics endpoints by attaching an inline table-valued function, acting as filter predicate, onto a table. Excluded rows vanish quietly from reads, updates and deletes.
Related terms
- AI gateway (Foundry)
API Management instance linked to a Microsoft Foundry resource; it sits in front of registered models, tools and agents, adding access control, rate limiting and diagnostics. Custom agents cannot be registered without one.
- AIServices (resource kind)
Setting kind to AIServices creates the multi-service Microsoft Foundry resource, which Microsoft recommends; Speech, Vision, Language, Azure OpenAI and Content Understanding are then reached with a single credential at a single endpoint.
- az cognitiveservices account create
Azure CLI command creating a Foundry Tools or Foundry resource based on
--location,--skuand--kind. Customer-managed key configuration belongs in--encryption;--assign-identitymerely creates a managed identity. - Azure OpenAI
Use of OpenAI models in Azure, including GPT, o-series, embeddings, image and Whisper, through either a Foundry resource or an Azure OpenAI resource. Content Understanding isn't available from a standalone Azure OpenAI resource.
- Billable Foundry resource (skillset)
Key or identity of a Foundry resource linked to a skillset, letting built-in Vision, Language and Translator skills process more than the free allowance of 20 documents per indexer per day; a single multi-service resource is enough for all of them.
- Foundry project
A container beneath a Foundry resource that keeps one team's agents, data, files, evaluations and project connections separate. Model deployments and resource-level connections are shared from the parent, and governance is not configured at this level.
- Guardrails + controls (Foundry portal)
A section of the Foundry portal with a Try it out page for running Content Safety checks, such as protected material detection and moderation of text or images, against a Foundry resource.
- Microsoft Foundry project
Boundary for development within a Foundry resource, where teams build and evaluate generative AI apps and agents.