The Azure Portal and Cloud Shell

Azure Basics · Azure Resources – Tools, Resource Manager and ARM Templates · Lesson 1 of 4

The Portal is the web UI to find, create and manage resources; Cloud Shell is a Bash/PowerShell shell in the browser, already signed in, with az, PowerShell, git and terraform installed.

Azure Portal

The web UI at portal.azure.com: a global search bar (resources, services, docs), creating and managing resources, customisable dashboards and favourites, notifications for background operations, and a button to open Cloud Shell.

Cloud Shell

An interactive shell in the browser, in Bash or PowerShell.

flowchart LR
  B["Browser / Portal"] --> CS["Cloud Shell<br/>temporary container, one per user"]
  CS --> AZ["az, Az PowerShell, kubectl,<br/>terraform, git, code editor"]
  CS -. "optional" .-> FS[("Azure Files share<br/>keeps $HOME between sessions")]

Each session is a temporary container per user, signed in automatically with the account used in the Portal.
Azure CLI, Azure PowerShell and many tools are preinstalled; open the built-in editor with code main.bicep.
To keep files between sessions, attach a storage account + file share (Cloud Shell creates a resource group cloud-shell-storage-<region>). You can now also choose an ephemeral session with no storage — every file is lost when it closes.
A session ends after 20 minutes without interaction.

Trap: Cloud Shell is not a long-lived VM: files outside $HOME (or in an ephemeral session) are lost when the session ends; do not run long jobs in it.

Command	Meaning
`az version`	Azure CLI version in Cloud Shell
`az group list -o table`	Existing resource groups (including Cloud Shell's)
`code main.bicep`	Open the built-in editor

Getting around the portal

Directories + subscriptions settings switch between tenants and filter which subscriptions appear.
All resources with filters by type, tag, or location is the quickest inventory view.
Every resource page has the same blades: Overview, Activity log, Access control (IAM), Tags, Diagnose and solve problems, plus Settings and Monitoring sections.
Service Health shows outages and planned maintenance that affect your regions; Azure Advisor collects recommendations.

Querying everything at once

Azure Resource Graph Explorer runs KQL queries across all subscriptions you can read, for example every VM without a tag or every public IP. The same queries run from the CLI with az graph query -q "Resources | where type =~ 'microsoft.compute/virtualmachines' | project name, location" (resource-graph extension).

Other ways to work

Tool	When it helps
Azure mobile app	Check alerts and restart a resource on the go
VS Code with Azure extensions	Edit Bicep with IntelliSense, deploy Functions and App Service
Local Azure CLI or PowerShell	Scripts, automation, offline editing
Windows Terminal	Opens a Cloud Shell tab directly

Cloud Shell details

Cloud Shell runs on a Linux container even in PowerShell mode, so Linux paths apply. It can be deployed into your own virtual network when it must reach private resources. Your session runs under your Entra identity, so it can only do what your RBAC roles allow. Check the active context first with az account show, because commands go to the default subscription.

Upload and download files with the toolbar buttons; files you keep must live in the mounted clouddrive share or $HOME.