A few months ago, Brendan Burns wrote a blog post about how his passion for containers and user interfaces would come together to enable a new integrated workflow that supports working with Azure in both graphical and command-line interfaces. He also mentions how containers offer an efficient way to create clean and consistent interfaces for users to interact with and how containers are revolutionizing compute workloads within Azure.

Today, the experience he describes comes to you as Azure Cloud Shell enters public preview. Cloud Shell removes workflow friction and improves productivity by enabling automatic and secure access to a preconfigured workstation built for Azure, on Azure. Cloud Shell runs entirely on containers orchestrated by Kubernetes, illustrating just one example of how container technology can revolutionize solutions built on Azure.

Cloud Shell offers a Bash experience today, with a PowerShell experience coming soon that will offer shell environment selection in addition to GUI/CLI flexibility.

Cloud Shell features

• Cloud Shell provides a browser-based shell experience running in the cloud to help manage your Azure resources. Leverage Cloud Shell to work untethered from a local machine in a way only the cloud can provide.

• Microsoft maintains and updates Cloud Shell on your behalf with commonly used CLI tools such as shell interpreters, Azure tools, text editors, source control, build tools, container tools, database tools, and more. Cloud Shell also includes language support for several popular programming languages such as Node.js, .NET, and Python.

• Cloud Shell persists your $Home directory through your Azure File storage to enable customized settings such as your preferred Azure subscription and working on files across sessions.

Azure CLI 2.0 integration

To provide a streamlined Azure CLI 2.0 experience, Cloud Shell:

• Automatically authenticates access to all of your account's subscriptions

• Maintains the installed Azure CLI 2.0 version to give you the latest and greatest experience in every Cloud Shell session

Whether you're an experienced Azure user or brand-new to the platform, Cloud Shell offers low-friction access to leverage or learn the Azure CLI 2.0. Cloud Shell enables you to automate and script actions on resources at scale from the comfort of the Azure portal. Whether you need to write a custom query for resource metadata or you need to deploy 1000 VMs, Cloud Shell brings the flexibility of choosing appropriate interfaces for certain tasks.

Docs integration

To make Azure CLI samples in documentation fully interactive, Cloud Shell is also embedded directly in docs.microsoft.com. With this integration an immersive learning story enables you to use the full Cloud Shell from within Azure CLI 2.0 documentation. This experience enables logging into your account and working with the same Cloud Shell from within docs that exists in the Azure portal. Try this experience on the Azure CLI 2.0 tutorials.

Try it today

Launch Cloud Shell from the top navigation bar of the Azure Portal. Learn more about Azure Cloud Shell.