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What is the Azure CLI?

  • Article

The Azure Command-Line Interface (CLI) is a cross-platform command-line tool to connect to Azure and execute administrative commands on Azure resources. It allows the execution of commands through a terminal using interactive command-line prompts or a script.

For interactive use, you first launch a shell such as cmd.exe on Windows, or Bash on Linux or macOS, and then issue a command at the shell prompt. To automate repetitive tasks, you assemble the CLI commands into a shell script using the script syntax of your chosen shell, and then you execute the script.

You can install the Azure CLI locally on Linux, Mac, or Windows computers. It can also be used from a browser through the Azure Cloud Shell or run from inside a Docker container.

Current Version

The current version of the Azure CLI is 2.49.0. For information about the latest release, see the release notes. To find your installed version and see if you need to update, run az version.

Data collection

Azure CLI collects telemetry data by default. Microsoft aggregates collected data to identify patterns of usage to identify common issues and to improve the experience of Azure CLI. Microsoft Azure CLI does not collect any private or personal data. For example, the usage data helps identify issues such as commands with low success and helps prioritize our work.

While we appreciate the insights this data provides, we also understand that not everyone wants to send usage data. You can disable data collection with the az config set core.collect_telemetry=false command. You can also read our privacy statement to learn more.

Prepare your environment

Before running Azure CLI commands, you need to setup your environment.

Azure CLI examples

This article provides different Azure CLI examples for the following :

  • Subscription syntax
  • Role assignment syntax
  • PowerShell syntax

Subscription syntax example

The Azure CLI syntax follows a simple reference name - command - parameter - parameter value pattern. For example, switching between subscriptions is often a common task. Here is the syntax.

az account set --subscription "my subscription name"

Now, how easy was that?! See Manage subscriptions with Azure CLI to learn more about using the Azure CLI to work with subscriptions and create management groups.

Role assignment syntax example

Another common use of the Azure CLI is managing role assignments.

az role assignment create --assignee servicePrincipalName --role Reader --scope /subscriptions/mySubscriptionID/resourceGroups/myResourceGroupName
az role assignment delete --assignee userSign-inName --role Contributor

See Create an Azure service principal with the Azure CLI for an in-depth turorial on managing service principals and role assignments.

PowerShell syntax comparison

Choose the right command-line tool explains the difference between tools and environments with an emphasis on the Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell. It also gives many side-by-side command comparisons. Here are two examples:

Command Azure CLI Azure PowerShell
Create Resource Group az group create --name <ResourceGroupName> --location eastus New-AzResourceGroup -Name <ResourceGroupName> -Location eastus
Create Azure Storage Account az storage account create --name <StorageAccountName> --resource-group <ResourceGroupName> --location eastus --sku Standard_LRS --kind StorageV2 New-AzStorageAccount -Name <StorageAccountName> -ResourceGroupName <ResourceGroupName> -Location eastus -SkuName Standard_LRS -Kind StorageV2

See Also