Azure PowerShell vs Azure CLI

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Azure PowerShell vs Azure CLI

In this Azure article, we will discuss the difference between Azure PowerShell and Azure CLI. Along with this, we will also discuss a few other topics as below.

  • Azure Cloud Shell

Azure PowerShell vs Azure CLI

Both Azure PowerShell and Azure CLI are command-line tools that help you for creating and manage your Azure resources. You can use both of them on multiple platforms such as Windows, Linux, macOS, etc.

Let’s list out the key differences between Azure PowerShell and Azure CLI.

Azure PowerShellAzure CLI
A PowerShell module or a set of PowerShell cmdlets that can be used across different platforms like Windows, Linux, macOS, etc.A command-line interface and a set of commands that can be used across multiple platforms like Windows, Linux, macOS, etc.
PowerShell or Windows PowerShell is a must to run Azure PowerShell.You can run Azure CLI in bash, PowerShell and cmd, etc.
Not supported.The Bash Shell environment is supported here.
Not supported.You need to use the Az login cmdlet to sign in or connect.
The cmd shell environment is supported here.NA
You can use the Connect-AzAccount cmdlet to sign in.To get the lists of Virtual Machines, you can use the Get-AzVM cmdlet.
Same way, to get help, you can use the Get-Help cmdlet in Azure PowerShell.To get the lists of Virtual Machines, you need to use az vm list cmdlet.
To get the lists of Virtual Machines, you need to use the az vm list cmdlet.Here, you need to use az –help cmdlet for the same purpose.

Adding a few more points for Azure CLI vs PowerShell

The main point here is both Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell are available in the Azure cloud. You can also use both of them remotely from your local machine.

To locate the Azure Cloud Shell, you can log in to the Azure Portal and click on the Cloud Shell icon as highlighted below which is present just before the Directory + Subscription button.

azure powershell vs azure cli

Once you will click on the Cloud Shell, it will give you the option, to either you can use Bash or PowerShell based on your requirement.

Azure CLI is a command-line tool that connects to Azure and executes different administrative commands on the different Azure resources. you can use the same commands for whatever platform you want to use like Windows, Linux or Mac, etc.

There are two versions of Azure CLI that are present now. The first one is the Azure CLI version 1.0 which is written with Node.js and the other Azure CLI version is 2.0 which is actually written in Python to support better cross-platform capabilities. Azure CLI can also be used with Groovy, Python, Ruby, or any other scripting language.

Whereas PowerShell is a great choice for the Azure Functions and Azure Automation Runbooks and you can’t use the Azure CLI here.

PowerShell has very excellent multithreaded workload support. PowerShell is very suitable for any of the quick script requirements.

Microsoft keeps on revising the Azure PowerShell modules. Now we have the az PowerShell module to perform many activities to manage the Azure resources.

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Wrapping Up

In this article, we have discussed the key differences between Azure PowerShell and Azure CLI, Azure CLI vs Azure PowerShell. Thanks for reading this article !!!