Cloud Shell Archives - Thomas Maurer

Jan082019January 8, 2019February 19, 20196 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

Mastering Azure with Cloud Shell

Posted in Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, Work

There are multiple ways to interact and manage resources in Microsoft Azure. You can use the Azure Portal or command line tools like the Azure PowerShell module or the Azure CLI, which you can install on your local machine. However, to set up a cloud management workstation for administrators and developers can be quite a lot of work. Especially if you have multiple machines, keeping consistency between these machines can be challenging. Another challenge is keeping the environment secure and all the tools up to date. This any many more things are addressed by the Cloud Shell.

Cloud Shell is not brand new, Microsoft announced Cloud Shell at Build 2017. This blog post is about how you can master Azure with Cloud Shell and to give you an overview about the possibilities of Cloud Shell.

What is Cloud Shell

Cloud Shell offers a browser-accessible, pre-configured shell experience for managing Azure resources without the overhead of installing, versioning, and maintaining a machine yourself. Azure Cloud Shell is assigned per unique user account and automatically authenticated with each session. This makes it a private and secure environment.

You get a modern web-based command line experience which can be accessed from several end points like the Azure Portal, shell.azure.com and the Azure mobile app, Visual Studio Code or directly in the Azure docs.

In the backend Azure uses containers and automatically attaches an Azure File Share to the container. You can store the data on it, so your data is persistent. This persist your data across different Cloud Shell sessions.

You can choose your preferred shell experience. Cloud Shell supports Bash and PowerShell and included your favorite third party tools and common tools and languages. If something like a module is missing, you can simply add it.

Jul172018July 17, 2018January 8, 20190 Commentby Thomas Maurer

You can now run a Visual Studio Code based editor in Azure Cloud Shell

Posted in Cloud, Containers, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, Work

Azure Cloud Shell, a browser-accessible shell for managing Azure resources, just got even more powerful. Today Microsoft added a new Visual Studio Code editor to Azure Cloud Shell. Okay, it is not the real Visual Studio Code, it is an editor based on the Visual Studio Code open-source project Monaco. Monaco is the same web-standards based editor that powers Visual Studio Code, and the editor is now integrated directly into Cloud Shell.

Now you not only have editors like vim, emacs or nano, you also able to run code, directly with in the Azure Cloud Shell. This is pretty handy when it comes to quickly edit some files like scripts or ARM templates.

This is not the first time the Azure Cloud Shell team and the Visual Studio Code team collaborated: Azure Cloud Shell in Visual Studio Code

Apr202018April 20, 2018January 8, 20192 Commentsby Thomas Maurer

Connect to Azure Stack from Azure Cloud Shell

Posted in Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, PowerShell, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code

A little while ago Microsoft announced the Azure Cloud Shell. The Azure Cloud Shell is a perfect tool to manage your Azure resources using the Azure CLI or Azure PowerShell. Wouldn’t it be great to also manage your resources running on Azure Stack? Thanks to the consistency between Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Azure Stack, you can use the same tools to manage your hybrid cloud.

First of all login to your Azure Cloud Shell on shell.azure.com or in the Azure Portal.

After the login you have to register Azure Stack as a new cloud by running the following command:

az cloud register \
-n AzureStack \
--endpoint-resource-manager "https://management.region.url.com" \
--suffix-storage-endpoint "region.url.com" \
--suffix-keyvault-dns ".vault.region.url.com"

az cloud register \

-n AzureStack \

--endpoint-resource-manager "https://management.region.url.com" \

--suffix-storage-endpoint "region.url.com" \

--suffix-keyvault-dns ".vault.region.url.com"

Now you can list the new Azure Stack cloud by using:

az cloud list -o table

1	az cloud list -o table

To switch to the Azure Stack Cloud use the following command:

az cloud set -n AzureStack

1	az cloud set -n AzureStack

If you are doing this the first time and you use another account you can use az login to login.

az login

az login

One thing you should do is to switch the profile version to an Azure Stack compatible version

az cloud update --profile 2017-03-09-profile

1	az cloud update --profile 2017-03-09-profile

Now you can start using the Azure CLI in the Azure Cloud Shell to manage your Azure Stack. First of all yes this works also if you just use the Azure CLI. In the case this case, the Azure Stack needs to be accessible from the internet. If your Azure Stack is not accessible from the internet, you can just use the Azure CLI directly from your management machine.

Azure Cloud Shell is very powerful, you can run Azure CLI as well as Azure PowerShell. Fun Fact, since you an also run the Azure Cloud Shell directly in Visual Studio Code, you can also just open up the shell session and start working from Visual Studio Code.

You can learn more in my blog post: Mastering Azure with Cloud Shell

Dec282017December 28, 2017January 8, 20190 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Azure Cloud Shell – shell.azure.com and in Visual Studio Code

Posted in Cloud, Containers, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, Web, Windows 10, Work

Back in May Microsoft made the Azure Cloud Shell available in the Microsoft Azure Portal. Now you can use it even quicker by just go to shell.azure.com. First you login with your Microsoft account or Work and School account, and if your account is in multiple Azure Active Directory tenants, you select the right tenant and you will be automatically logged in. So even if you are on a PC where you can not install the Azure CLI or the Azure PowerShell module, you can still easily fire up a shell where you can run the Azure CLI, Azure PowerShell and other CLI tools like Docker, Kubectl, emacs, vim, nano, git and more.

In addition you can also open up Azure Cloud Shell directly from Visual Studio Code

With that, enjoy your holidays and I wish you a good start in the new year!

May112017May 11, 2017January 8, 20190 Commentby Thomas Maurer

Microsoft Azure Cloud Shell

Posted in Cloud, Containers, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure Stack, PowerShell, Virtualization, Web, Web, Work

Today at the Microsoft Build Conference, Microsoft announced the Azure Cloud Shell. The Azure Cloud Shell is a browser-based shell experience to manage and develop Azure resources.

Azure Cloud Shell offers a browser-accessible, pre-configured shell experience for managing Azure resources without the overhead of installing, versioning, and maintaining a machine yourself. Today it gives you a variety of different tools directly from your web browser in the Azure Portal.

This gives Azure Administrators an easy admin environment to manage resources as well as third-party applications. In the background Microsoft runs thousands of isolated containers, ready for you to use. Microsoft takes care of keeping this container up to date, so you can focus on your administrator tasks. The usage is free, the only thing you will need to pay, are the storage cost for your container and the things you store on the Azure File Share.

Linux shell interpreter

Bash
sh

Azure tools

Azure CLI 2.0 and 1.0

Text editors

vim
nano
emacs

Source control

Build tools

make
maven
npm
pip

Containers

Docker
Kubectl
DC/OS CLI

Databases

MySQL client
PostgreSql client
sqlcmd Utility

Other

iPython Client

It also looks like PowerShell will be available later, hopefully it will arrive soon. Microsoft also announced Azure PowerShell 3.0. If you want to learn, check out my blog post: Mastering Azure with Cloud Shell

May182016May 18, 2016January 9, 20190 Commentby Thomas Maurer

How to Install the Azure PowerShell Module

Posted in Cloud, Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Virtualization, Web, Web, Windows, Windows 10, Windows Server, Windows Server 2016, Work

This blogs post describes how you can install the Azure PowerShell module. Microsoft a couple of weeks ago released version one of their new Azure PowerShell module on .NET Core called the Az module. The Az module will replace the AzureRM module over time. however, the AzureRM module is still supported. The new Az module is a cross-platform module.

Well if you are working with Microsoft Azure you may need the PowerShell Modules for automation and some settings which are only available in PowerShell. With the latest releases you can install the Azure PowerShell Module using the package management in PowerShell, and install the Azure PowerShell module form the PowerShell Gallery.

PowerShell Gallery Azure Az Module

Az module features

Az is a replacement for AzureRM and AzureRM.Netcore.
Runs on PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell Core.
It is always up to date with the latest tooling for Azure services.
Az ships in Cloud Shell.
It shortens and normalizes cmdlet names. All cmdlets use “Az” as their noun prefix.
Az will simplify and normalize module names. Data plane and management plane cmdlets for each service will use the same Az module.
It ships with new cmdlets to enable script compatibility with AzureRM (Enable/Disable-AzureRmAlias).

Supported platforms

PowerShell 5.1 – Windows 7 or greater with .Net Framework 4.7.2 or greater installed
PowerShell Core 6.0 – Windows, Mac OS, Linux
PowerShell Core 6.1 – Windows, Mac OS, Linux

Install Azure PowerShell module

For me using the PowerShell Package Management and the PowerShell Gallery is may the easiest and fastest way to install it. In Windows 10 or a computer with the Windows Management Framework 5 installed, you can use the following PowerShell cmdlets to install it.

You should not install Az side-by-side with AzureRM. Remove all AzureRM modules before installing Az.

Install-Module Az

1	Install-Module Az

You can also update the AZ module using the following command:

Update-Module Az

1	Update-Module Az

And you can use the following command to login:

Connect-AzAccount

1	Connect-AzAccount

You can also see the Azure PowerShell Modules and versions using the PowerShell Package Management:

Find-Module -ListAvailable *Az*

1	Find-Module -ListAvailable Az

AzureRM compatibility

If you would like to run scripts developed for AzureRM using Az, use the Enable/Disable-AzureRmAlias cmdlets to add or remove aliases from AzureRM cmdlets to Az cmdlets.

This can be enabled and disabled:

Enable-AzureRmAlias

Disable-AzureRMAlias

Enable-AzureRmAlias

Disable-AzureRMAlias

Run Azure PowerShell from Cloud Shell

You can also run the latest Azure PowerShell module version directly from Cloud Shell, with no need to install it.

This blog post was updated with the release 1.0.0 of the Azure Az module based on .NET Core. You can find more about the new Azure PowerShell module on the GitHub repo.

Also check out my blog post: Mastering Azure using Cloud Shell