Azure Cloud Shell is a browser-based shell experience to manage and develop Azure resources.

Cloud Shell offers a browser-accessible, pre-configured shell experience for managing Azure resources without the overhead of installing, versioning, and maintaining a machine yourself.

Cloud Shell allocates machines on a per-request basis and as a result machine state doesn't persist across sessions. Since Cloud Shell is built for interactive sessions, shells automatically terminate after 20 minutes of shell inactivity.

Azure Cloud Shell runs on Common Base Linux - Mariner (CBL-Mariner), Microsoft's Linux distribution for cloud-infrastructure-edge products and services.

Microsoft internally compiles all the packages included in the CBL-Mariner repository to help guard against supply chain attacks. Tooling has been updated to reflect the new base image CBL-Mariner. You can get a full list of installed package versions using the following command: tdnf list installed. If these changes affected your Cloud Shell environment, contact Azure Support or create an issue in the Cloud Shell repository.

Cloud Shell securely and automatically authenticates account access for the Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell.

To persist files across sessions, Cloud Shell walks you through attaching an Azure file share on first launch. Once completed, Cloud Shell will automatically attach your storage (mounted as $HOME\clouddrive) for all future sessions. Additionally, your $HOME directory is persisted as an .img in your Azure File share. Files outside of $HOME and machine state aren't persisted across sessions. Use best practices when storing secrets such as SSH keys. Services, like Azure Key Vault, have tutorials for setup.

Learn more about persisting files in Cloud Shell.

PowerShell in Cloud Shell provides the Azure drive (Azure:). You can switch to the Azure drive with cd Azure: and back to your home directory with cd ~. The Azure drive enables easy discovery and navigation of Azure resources such as Compute, Network, Storage etc. similar to filesystem navigation. You can continue to use the familiar Azure PowerShell cmdlets to manage these resources regardless of the drive you are in. Any changes made to the Azure resources, either made directly in Azure portal or through Azure PowerShell cmdlets, are reflected in the Azure drive. You can run dir -Force to refresh your resources.

PowerShell in Cloud Shell contains a private build of the Exchange Online module. Run Connect-EXOPSSession to get your Exchange cmdlets.

Run Get-Command -Module tmp_*

Cloud Shell includes pre-configured authentication for open source tools such as Terraform, Ansible, and Chef InSpec. Try it out from the example walkthroughs.

Linux tools

• bash
• zsh
• sh
• tmux
• dig

Azure tools

• Azure CLI
• AzCopy
• Azure Functions CLI
• Service Fabric CLI
• Batch Shipyard
• blobxfer

Text editors

• code (Cloud Shell editor)
• vim
• nano
• emacs

Source control

• git

Build tools

• make
• maven
• npm
• pip

Containers

• Docker Desktop
• Kubectl
• Helm
• DC/OS CLI

Databases

• MySQL client
• PostgreSql client
• sqlcmd Utility
• mssql-scripter

Other

• iPython Client
• Cloud Foundry CLI
• Terraform
• Ansible
• Chef InSpec
• Puppet Bolt
• HashiCorp Packer
• Office 365 CLI

• Bash in Cloud Shell Quickstart
• PowerShell in Cloud Shell Quickstart
• Learn about Azure CLI
• Learn about Azure PowerShell