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Quickstart for PowerShell in Azure Cloud Shell

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This document details how to use the PowerShell in Cloud Shell in the Azure portal.

The PowerShell experience in Azure Cloud Shell now runs PowerShell 7.2 in a Linux environment. There are differences in the PowerShell experience in Cloud Shell compared Windows PowerShell.

The filesystem in Linux is case-sensitive. Windows considers file.txt and FILE.txt to be the same file. In Linux, they're considered to be different files. Proper casing must be used while tab-completing in the filesystem. PowerShell specific experiences, such as tab-completing cmdlet names, parameters, and values, aren't case-sensitive.

For a detailed list of differences, see PowerShell differences on non-Windows platforms.

Start Cloud Shell

  1. Select on Cloud Shell button from the top navigation bar of the Azure portal

    Screenshot showing how to start Azure Cloud Shell from the Azure portal.

  2. Select the PowerShell environment from the drop-down and you'll be in Azure drive (Azure:)

    Screenshot showing how to select the PowerShell environment for the Azure Cloud Shell.

Run PowerShell commands

Run regular PowerShell commands in the Cloud Shell, such as:

PS Azure:\> Get-Date

# You will see output similar to the following:
Friday, July 27, 2018 7:08:48 AM

PS Azure:\> Get-AzVM -Status

# You will see output similar to the following:
ResourceGroupName       Name       Location                VmSize   OsType     ProvisioningState  PowerState
-----------------       ----       --------                ------   ------     -----------------  ----------
MyResourceGroup2        Demo        westus         Standard_DS1_v2  Windows    Succeeded           running
MyResourceGroup         MyVM1       eastus            Standard_DS1  Windows    Succeeded           running
MyResourceGroup         MyVM2       eastus   Standard_DS2_v2_Promo  Windows    Succeeded           deallocated

Interact with virtual machines

You can find all your virtual machines under the current subscription via VirtualMachines directory.

PS Azure:\MySubscriptionName\VirtualMachines> dir

# You will see output similar to the following:
    Directory: Azure:\MySubscriptionName\VirtualMachines


Name       ResourceGroupName  Location  VmSize          OsType              NIC ProvisioningState  PowerState
----       -----------------  --------  ------          ------              --- -----------------  ----------
TestVm1    MyResourceGroup1   westus    Standard_DS2_v2 Windows       my2008r213         Succeeded     stopped
TestVm2    MyResourceGroup1   westus    Standard_DS1_v2 Windows          jpstest         Succeeded deallocated
TestVm10   MyResourceGroup2   eastus    Standard_DS1_v2 Windows           mytest         Succeeded     running

Invoke PowerShell script across remote VMs

Warning

Please refer to Troubleshooting remote management of Azure VMs.

Assuming you have a VM, MyVM1, let's use Invoke-AzVMCommand to invoke a PowerShell script block on the remote machine.

Enable-AzVMPSRemoting -Name MyVM1 -ResourceGroupname MyResourceGroup
Invoke-AzVMCommand -Name MyVM1 -ResourceGroupName MyResourceGroup -Scriptblock {Get-ComputerInfo} -Credential (Get-Credential)

You can also navigate to the VirtualMachines directory first and run Invoke-AzVMCommand as follows.

PS Azure:\> cd MySubscriptionName\ResourceGroups\MyResourceGroup\Microsoft.Compute\virtualMachines
PS Azure:\MySubscriptionName\ResourceGroups\MyResourceGroup\Microsoft.Compute\virtualMachines> Get-Item MyVM1 | Invoke-AzVMCommand -Scriptblock {Get-ComputerInfo} -Credential (Get-Credential)

# You will see output similar to the following:

PSComputerName                                          : 65.52.28.207
RunspaceId                                              : 2c2b60da-f9b9-4f42-a282-93316cb06fe1
WindowsBuildLabEx                                       : 14393.1066.amd64fre.rs1_release_sec.170327-1835
WindowsCurrentVersion                                   : 6.3
WindowsEditionId                                        : ServerDatacenter
WindowsInstallationType                                 : Server
WindowsInstallDateFromRegistry                          : 5/18/2017 11:26:08 PM
WindowsProductId                                        : 00376-40000-00000-AA947
WindowsProductName                                      : Windows Server 2016 Datacenter
WindowsRegisteredOrganization                           :
...

Interactively sign-in to a remote VM

You can use Enter-AzVM to interactively log into a VM running in Azure.

Enter-AzVM -Name MyVM1 -ResourceGroupName MyResourceGroup -Credential (Get-Credential)

You can also navigate to the VirtualMachines directory first and run Enter-AzVM as follows:

Get-Item MyVM1 | Enter-AzVM -Credential (Get-Credential)

Discover WebApps

By entering into the WebApps directory, you can easily navigate your web apps resources

dir .\WebApps\

# You will see output similar to the following:
    Directory: Azure:\MySubscriptionName\WebApps

Name            State    ResourceGroup      EnabledHostNames                  Location
----            -----    -------------      ----------------                  --------
mywebapp1       Stopped  MyResourceGroup1   {mywebapp1.azurewebsites.net...   West US
mywebapp2       Running  MyResourceGroup2   {mywebapp2.azurewebsites.net...   West Europe
mywebapp3       Running  MyResourceGroup3   {mywebapp3.azurewebsites.net...   South Central US

# You can use Azure cmdlets to Start/Stop your web apps
PS Azure:\MySubscriptionName\WebApps> Start-AzWebApp -Name mywebapp1 -ResourceGroupName MyResourceGroup1

# You will see output similar to the following:
Name           State    ResourceGroup        EnabledHostNames                   Location
----           -----    -------------        ----------------                   --------
mywebapp1      Running  MyResourceGroup1     {mywebapp1.azurewebsites.net ...   West US

# Refresh the current state with -Force
PS Azure:\MySubscriptionName\WebApps> dir -Force

# You will see output similar to the following:
    Directory: Azure:\MySubscriptionName\WebApps

Name            State    ResourceGroup      EnabledHostNames                  Location
----            -----    -------------      ----------------                  --------
mywebapp1       Running  MyResourceGroup1   {mywebapp1.azurewebsites.net...   West US
mywebapp2       Running  MyResourceGroup2   {mywebapp2.azurewebsites.net...   West Europe
mywebapp3       Running  MyResourceGroup3   {mywebapp3.azurewebsites.net...   South Central US

SSH

To authenticate to servers or VMs using SSH, generate the public-private key pair in Cloud Shell and publish the public key to authorized_keys on the remote machine, such as /home/user/.ssh/authorized_keys.

Note

You can create SSH private-public keys using ssh-keygen and publish them to $env:USERPROFILE\.ssh in Cloud Shell.

Using SSH

Follow instructions here to create a new VM configuration using Azure PowerShell cmdlets. Before calling into New-AzVM to kick off the deployment, add SSH public key to the VM configuration. The newly created VM will contain the public key in the ~\.ssh\authorized_keys location, thereby enabling credential-free SSH session to the VM.

# Create VM config object - $vmConfig using instructions on linked page above

# Generate SSH keys in Cloud Shell
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048 -f $HOME\.ssh\id_rsa

# Ensure VM config is updated with SSH keys
$sshPublicKey = Get-Content "$HOME\.ssh\id_rsa.pub"
Add-AzVMSshPublicKey -VM $vmConfig -KeyData $sshPublicKey -Path "/home/azureuser/.ssh/authorized_keys"

# Create a virtual machine
New-AzVM -ResourceGroupName <yourResourceGroup> -Location <vmLocation> -VM $vmConfig

# SSH to the VM
ssh azureuser@MyVM.Domain.Com

List available commands

Under Azure drive, type Get-AzCommand to get context-specific Azure commands.

Alternatively, you can always use Get-Command *az* -Module Az.* to find out the available Azure commands.

Install custom modules

You can run Install-Module to install modules from the PowerShell Gallery.

Get-Help

Type Get-Help to get information about PowerShell in Azure Cloud Shell.

Get-Help

For a specific command, you can still do Get-Help followed by a cmdlet.

Get-Help Get-AzVM

Use Azure Files to store your data

You can create a script, say helloworld.ps1, and save it to your clouddrive to use it across shell sessions.

cd $HOME\clouddrive
# Create a new file in clouddrive directory
New-Item helloworld.ps1
# Open the new file for editing
code .\helloworld.ps1
# Add the content, such as 'Hello World!'
.\helloworld.ps1
Hello World!

Next time when you use PowerShell in Cloud Shell, the helloworld.ps1 file will exist under the $HOME\clouddrive directory that mounts your Azure Files share.

Use custom profile

You can customize your PowerShell environment, by creating PowerShell profiles - profile.ps1 (or Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1). Save it under $profile.CurrentUserAllHosts (or $profile.CurrentUserCurrentHost), so that it can be loaded in every PowerShell in Cloud Shell session.

For how to create a profile, refer to About Profiles.

Use Git

To clone a Git repo in Cloud Shell, you need to create a personal access token and use it as the username. Once you have your token, clone the repository as follows:

git clone https://<your-access-token>@github.com/username/repo.git

Exit the shell

Type exit to terminate the session.