The Azure Portal and Cloud Shell
The Azure portal is your visual command centre, and Cloud Shell gives you a terminal right in your browser. Together, they're how you manage Azure day-to-day.
Managing Azure — GUI and CLI
Think of two ways to order food at a restaurant.
Azure portal = the touchscreen menu with pictures. You see everything visually, tap what you want, customise your order, and submit it. Easy and visual.
Cloud Shell (CLI/PowerShell) = texting your order to the kitchen. You type exactly what you want. It’s faster if you know what to say, and you can text the same order to multiple restaurants at once (automation).
Both get the same food delivered — they’re just different ways to interact with Azure. Most people start with the portal and learn CLI as they get comfortable.
The Azure portal
The portal at portal.azure.com is where most people manage Azure. It provides:
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Dashboard | Customisable home screen with tiles for key metrics |
| Resource browser | Search and navigate all Azure services |
| Create resources | Wizard-based creation for VMs, databases, storage, etc. |
| Monitor | View metrics, alerts, and health at a glance |
| Cost Management | Track spending directly in the portal |
| Cloud Shell | Open a terminal directly in the browser |
Key facts:
- Web-based — works from any modern browser, any device
- Always up to date — no software to install or update
- Customisable — pin favourite services, create custom dashboards
- Resilient — replicated across Azure’s infrastructure for high availability
Kai uses the portal for everything — creating VMs, checking costs, setting up databases. The visual interface makes it easy to learn without memorising commands.
Azure Cloud Shell
Cloud Shell gives you a command-line environment right in your browser — no local installation needed.
Two shells, one purpose
| Feature | Azure CLI (Bash) | Azure PowerShell |
|---|---|---|
| Language | Bash syntax | PowerShell syntax |
| Commands | az vm create, az group list | New-AzVM, Get-AzResourceGroup |
| Ideal for | Linux admins, developers, scripting | Windows admins, PowerShell users |
| Output | JSON by default | Objects by default |
| Runs on | Windows, macOS, Linux, Cloud Shell | Windows, macOS, Linux, Cloud Shell |
Both do the same things — create VMs, manage storage, configure networks. The choice is personal preference. Azure CLI uses shorter commands; PowerShell uses verb-noun patterns familiar to Windows admins.
Why use CLI over the portal?
| Portal (GUI) | CLI/PowerShell |
|---|---|
| Click through menus | Type one command |
| Great for exploring and learning | Great for repeating and automating |
| One resource at a time | Create 100 resources in a loop |
| Hard to reproduce exact steps | Scripts are repeatable and shareable |
Summit Construction’s IT manager uses the portal to explore and troubleshoot. But she uses Azure CLI scripts to deploy new project environments — one script creates the entire setup (VNet, VMs, database, storage) in minutes.
Cloud Shell key details
- Authenticated automatically — uses your portal login
- Persistent storage — 5 GB of storage attached to your Cloud Shell session (files persist between sessions)
- Pre-installed tools — Git, Node.js, Python, .NET, Terraform, kubectl, and more
- Requires a storage account — Cloud Shell creates one on first use (for persistent files)
- Free — Cloud Shell itself is free; you only pay for the small storage account
🎬 Video walkthrough
🎬 Video coming soon
Azure Portal and Cloud Shell — AZ-900
Azure Portal and Cloud Shell — AZ-900
~8 minFlashcards
Knowledge Check
Kai wants to quickly create a resource in Azure using a visual, click-through interface without installing any software. What should they use?
Summit Construction's IT manager wants to automate the creation of identical project environments. She needs to run the same setup script every time a new project starts. Which approach is BEST?
Next up: Infrastructure as Code — ARM templates, Bicep, and Azure Arc.