Create an Azure Resource interactively with Azure PowerShell

  • 5 minutes

In interactive mode, PowerShell allows you to enter and run commands immediately.

In the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) example, the goal is to create three test environments, each containing virtual machines (VMs). Use resource groups to ensure the VMs are organized into separate environments:

  • Unit testing
  • Integration testing
  • Acceptance testing

Since you only need to create the resource groups once, using PowerShell interactively for this task is a reasonable choice.

When you run a command in PowerShell, it matches the command to a cmdlet and performs the requested action.

Example: How to create a resource group with Azure PowerShell

Let's perform a common task: creating a resource group. Resource groups help you manage related resources collectively, and creating a new resource group is often one of the first tasks you perform when starting a new Azure solution.

Here are the three steps you need to follow:

  1. Connect to your Azure subscription.

  2. Create the resource group.

  3. Verify the resource group was successfully created.

Each step corresponds to a different Azure PowerShell command.

Connect to Azure

When using a local installation of Azure PowerShell, you must authenticate before executing any Azure PowerShell commands. The Connect-AzAccount cmdlet prompts you for your Azure credentials and then connects to your Azure subscription.

To connect interactively, you don't need to specify any parameters:

Connect-AzAccount

This command opens a prompt for your Azure credentials and establishes a connection to your Azure subscription.

Work with subscriptions

If you're new to Azure, you only have a single subscription. However, if you've been using Azure for a while, you might have multiple subscriptions. Azure PowerShell allows you to configure which subscription your commands are executed against.

You can only be active in one subscription at a time. Use the Get-AzContext cmdlet to determine which subscription is currently active. If it's not the correct one, you can switch subscriptions using the Set-AzContext cmdlet.

  1. Get a list of all your subscriptions:

    Get-AzSubscription

  2. Check the current subscription you're logged into:

    Get-AzContext

  3. Change your active subscription:

    Set-AzContext -Subscription '00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000'

    If you need to look up the Subscription ID, you can find it in the output of the Get-AzSubscription cmdlet.

Create a resource group

When creating resources in Azure, you place them into a resource group for management purposes.

To create a resource group, use the New-AzResourceGroup cmdlet. You must specify a name and a location, and the name must be unique within your subscription. The location determines where the metadata for your resource group is stored, which can be important for compliance reasons. Use the Get-AzLocation cmdlet to determine the available locations.

Note

If you are working in an Azure sandbox, it creates the resource group for you. If you prefer to work in your own subscription, use the following command.

The syntax for creating a resource group is:

New-AzResourceGroup -Name <resource-group-name> -Location <location>

List all resource groups

To retrieve a list of all resource groups in the active subscription, use the Get-AzResourceGroup cmdlet.

Get-AzResourceGroup

For a more concise view, you can pipe the output to the Format-Table cmdlet:

Get-AzResourceGroup | Format-Table

You can also filter the output to show only a specific resource group:

Get-AzResourceGroup -Name <resource-group-name>

Create an Azure Virtual Machine

Creating virtual machines (VMs) is a common task you can perform with Azure PowerShell.

The New-AzVM cmdlet is used to create a VM. This cmdlet has several parameters to handle the extensive configuration settings for a VM. Most parameters have reasonable default values, so you typically need to specify only five key items:

  • ResourceGroupName: The resource group where the new VM is placed.
  • Name: The name of the VM in Azure.
  • Location: The geographic region where the VM is provisioned.
  • Credential: An object containing the username and password for the VM administrator account. Use the Get-Credential cmdlet to prompt for a username and password and store them as a credential object.
  • Image: The operating system image to use for the VM, typically a Linux distribution or Windows Server.

Here's an example:

$azVmParams = @{
    ResourceGroupName = '<resource-group-name>'
    Name              = '<machine-name>'
    Credential        = '<credentials-object>'
    Location          = '<location>'
    Image             = '<image-name>'
}
New-AzVM @azVmParams

You can supply these parameters as a hash table with splatting for the New-AzVM cmdlet, as shown in the previous example. Alternatively, you could supply the parameters directly to the New-AzVM cmdlet or use other cmdlets to configure the virtual machine, such as Set-AzVMOperatingSystem, Set-AzVMSourceImage, Add-AzVMNetworkInterface, and Set-AzVMOSDisk.

For example, to supply the parameters directly to the New-AzVM cmdlet, use the following syntax:

New-AzVM -Name <vm-name> -ResourceGroupName <resource-group-name> -Credential (Get-Credential) ...

Example: Getting information for a VM

You can list the VMs in your subscription using the Get-AzVM command. This command also supports retrieving a specific VM by specifying the Name parameter.

Store the results of Get-AzVM in a variable:

$vm = Get-AzVM -Name <vm-name> -ResourceGroupName <resource-group-name>

The contents of the $vm variable is an object you can interact with. For example, you can make changes to this object and then push the changes to Azure using the Update-AzVM command:

$resourceGroupName = '<resource-group-name>'
$vm = Get-AzVM -Name <vm-name> -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName
$vm.HardwareProfile.vmSize = 'Standard_DS3_v2'

Update-AzVM -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -VM $vm

Using PowerShell in interactive mode is appropriate for one-off tasks. For example, you can create and manage resource groups interactively if they're only created once during the lifetime of a project. Interactive mode is often quicker and easier than writing a script for tasks that are executed only once.