Cloud Shell - It's the Cursor

In today’s post I’d like to talk about the cursor. What’s the cursor you may be thinking? Well, what I’m really talking about is the Cloud Shell from Microsoft which is represented by the cursor in the menu bar.

When working within Azure, you’ll quickly realize that you need to work in PowerShell or Bash on a regular basis and there are several tools to support this. However, you have a good scripting window right in the portal if you don’t have a lot of tools or you’re unsure what you want to do or what to start out with.

The cursor symbol in the portal will give you the option to either open a PowerShell or Bash Shell and here you’re able to do many of the operations in secured connection to the Azure assets you’re working on. Here’s a quick walk through:

• First, click that cursor icon in the toolbar and it will open a shell in your existing browser.
• Next, create a storage account for your selected subscription. This is used for files used by various shells that you do. With your first use, it will ask you to create the storage account, so you can use Cloud Shell moving forward.
• Once you’ve done that, it connects the subscription and preps you on what’s next based on the shell you’re using. I recommend that you expand the window to a full screen view.
• If you’re in PowerShell, you can see the subscription ID by typing in the DIR command. This will tell you what subscriptions are available for you to work with.
• If you love Linux and choose Bash, the AZ command gives you examples of Azure commands for Bash. To see the equivalent subscription info, use the ‘AZ Account List’ command. This will return JSON formatted subscription info in Bash.

I’ve done work with Bash with MySQL PostgreSQL. The Bash Cloud Shell made it easier for me to interact with those databases on deployment of PaaS solutions on Azure. As much of our work requires scripting, the Cloud Shell puts the power scripting in Azure at our fingertips.

So, it’s cool that no matter where you are, if you can get to a browser, you can open Cloud Shell and you can do the work you need to in the cloud. Microsoft is making it easier than ever to interact and work with the different resources we have and to work in Azure.

If you have questions about PowerShell or any Azure product or service, you’re in the right place. Click the link below or contact us—we love Azure and we’re here to help.