The discussion of ARM templates up to this point has all been about ARM templates for a resource group deployment. A template describes one or more resources that are deployed to a resource group. Additionally, there are also subscription-level templates. An example ARM template for a resource group is shown as follows:

{
    "$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2018-05-01
                                                ... /subscriptionDeploymentTemplate.json#",
    "contentVersion": "1.0.0.1",
    "parameters": { },
    "variables": { },
    "resources": [
        {
            "type": "Microsoft.Resources/resourceGroups",
            "apiVersion": "2018-05-01",
            "location": "West Europe",
            "name": "myResourceGroup",
            "properties": {}
        }
    ],
    "outputs": {}
}

The format for a subscription template is completely the same as that for a resource group. The differences are $schema, which points to another schema location, and the types of resources that are supported. Subscription templates do not support the creation of resources directly, and support only the creation of resource groups, the initiation of template deployments, creating and assigning Azure Policies, and the creation of role assignments.