Additional Tools for Azure Developers

In addition to configuring your IDE and installing the Azure CLI, multiple other tools and utilities are available to help you be more productive with Azure.

Azure PowerShell

Azure PowerShell is a PowerShell module of cmdlets for managing Azure resource directly from PowerShell, either from the command line or from within PowerShell scripts. Azure PowerShell supports PowerShell features like PowerShell objects and combining commands into pipelines. If you have used PowerShell before or need to write complex automation scripts to manage Azure resources, you will want to install Azure PowerShell.

Azure Developer CLI (preview)

Azure Developer CLI (azd) is an open-source tool that accelerates the process of building cloud apps on Azure. The CLI provides best practice, developer-friendly commands that map to key stages in your workflow, whether you're working in the terminal, your editor or integrated development environment (IDE), or DevOps.

You can use azd with extensible templates that include everything you need to get an application up and running in Azure. These templates include application code, and reusable infrastructure as code assets.

Azure Storage Explorer

Azure Storage Explorer is a free, GUI tool for managing storage resources and data in Azure. You can upload, download and manage blobs and files, as well as manage data in Azure queues, tables and CosmosDB. If you plan on working with any storage resources in Azure, installation of Azure Storage Explorer is recommended. Versions are available for Windows, macOS and Linux.

Azure Data Studio

Azure Data Studio is a cross-platform database tool for accessing both on-premises and cloud databases. It allows you to edit and execute SQL queries in addition to charting and visualizing result sets. It supports all versions of SQL Server from SQL Server 2014 and later and Azure SQL. If you plan to work with Azure SQL, download and install Azure Data Studio.

Next steps

Validate your development environment is set up correctly using the .NET on Azure development environment checklist.