Azure CLI vs Powershell?

Question

Not precisely able to understand the merit of Azure CLI on Windows environment.

Is it targetted for the audience who want to manage Azure IAAS from Linux environment?

I thought Powershell core is going to be the way for non-Windows admins. Is PowerShell Core not going to be ported to well on all platforms, to serve the cross-platform audience?

In a nutshell, is it worth learning Azure CLI?

Answer 1

Azure CLI is a PowerShell-like-tool available for all platforms. You can use the same commands no matter what platform you use: Windows, Linux or Mac.

Now, there are two version Azure CLI. The Azure CLI 1.0 was written with Node.js to achieve cross-platform capabilities, and the new Azure CLI 2.0 is written in Python to offer better cross-platform capabilities. Both are Open Source and available on Github. However, for now, only certain PowerShell cmdlets support use on Linux.

Is it targetted for the audience who want to manage Azure IAAS from Linux environment?

I think the answer is yes. For a Linux or Mac developer, I think they more likely to use Azure CLI.

Answer 2

Both, Azure CLI and the PowerShell package use the REST API of Azure.

As one of our Microsoft contacts said: Use whatever you like and you prefer.

There are some pros for Azure CLI:

1. Open Source - which has many advantages. It might be developing faster in the future. You can view what is really in the Code, the community might or will be bigger, and so on.
2. Azure CLI can be used with Groovy, Python, Ruby or any other scripting language. It is easier to get good developers for this languages than an experienced PowerShell developer. For example: I took Groovy because of Java. It is easier to use this combination then learning PowerShell scripting....

Currently there is 1 really big positive for PowerShell: there is a huge repository of PowerShell script examples for Azure. BUT: often you have to do it on your own to fit your requirements - therefore an example might be a good starting point - sometimes it is easier to begin from scratch.

My recommendation would be: Use Azure CLI --> For Scripting use the language your company is familiar with.

Answer 3

Just wanted to add my experience with both Azure Cli and Az PowerShell.

As per 2019, both are cross-platform so it should only be a language/syntax preference but with Azure Cli all/most commands are idempotent.

I've ended up replacing all my ARM Templates with Azure Cli scripts as it is less verbose and easy to read.

With Az Powershell, you still need to check if the resource exists before creating it otherwise it will throw an exception so scripts can become very complicated for no reason.

We're using both Azure Cli and Az Powershell with Azure DevOps. Azure Cli command can now be executed from bash (Linux) or bat (Windows) scripts. So it is not optimum... (EDIT 2020 You can now run Azure CLI using Powershell scripts as well)

• We deploy resources with Azure Cli because it is easy to read and commands are idempotent.
• For complex scripting I prefer using PowerShell as there are a lot of useful language features.

EDIT 2021

With the new Azure Bicep, I've started going back to "ARM type" deployment: Bicep is really easy to use if you understand ARM template and stay readable even with complex deployments.

In addition to Az CLI (Powershell core) it handles most of the scripting i need to do.

Answer 4

PowerShell has some significant advantages over CLI:

• PowerShell is a language of Azure Functions. So you can easily write a module or code and push it to a secured Azure Function. CLI is not a supported language.
• Same goes for Azure Automation Runbooks, whereas CLI is not a supported language.
• If you want to orchestrate a hybrid workload covering on premise and cloud, i.e. deploy a Service to a Windows Server and then deploy an endpoint in Azure for it to interact with, PowerShell can but CLI can't (and I would surprised if it did).
• If you want to invest in one language that can call legacy Modules for management, PowerShell can but CLI can't.
• If you want to create your own DLL in C# or any other language and incorporate that into your scripts. I've had to reverse engineer DLLs and wrap them in PowerShell to incorporate into orchestrations.
• I've had significantly more success extending DevOps pipelines with PowerShell than CLI.
• PowerShell has very good multithreaded workload support for scenarios such as Azure unit and smoke testing and large Azure parallel deployments (beyond DevOps parallel tasks which get clunky). TBH, I am not aware of native multithreading in Azure CLI.
• I can develop a module, use it in all the above scenarios and then give it to an end client; TBH, I don't believe I can do that for CLI (create a module, digitally sign it and then nuget feed distro).

There is almost nothing I've not scripted in PowerShell, whereas with CLI I can do something but not others. My PowerShell skills have kept relevant for over 10 years where I've been doing enterprise SharePoint, Dynamics, now Office and Azure... so I am biased.

Answer 5

Powershell was not available in non-Windows platform prior to 2018. Staring Jan 2018, Powershell is available in MacOS and Linux platforms.

Installation instructions for Powershell on MacOS or Linux is available here

Answer 6

PowerShell is Open Source too. Microsoft have just released PowerShell Azure Az module (Dec 2018), which uses .Net core. So it runs on Linux,Mac OS and Windows. Azure CLI is still there for Linux developers, if preferred.

Answer 7

In a nutshell, is it worth learning Azure CLI?

I've noticed when doing the MS Azure training (AZ-900 fundamentals and AZ-303 Azure Architect) is that the exercises are done in Azure CLI. Granted, they're all "copy and paste this code" but it seems that MS are favouring CLI over PowerShell, at least for training purposes.

UPDATE: I recently had a lot of trouble with Azure CLI behind a proxy. PowerShell did NOT have any issues. As someone used to PowerShell, the CLI is kinda clunky and dumb. That said, Terraform requires Azure CLI so that may be a good enough reason to consider it.

Answer 8

Not necessary you'll use the Azure CLI on Linux, you also can use it on Windows and it works pretty well =D

it depends on what you want to do, in my personal opinion. I prefer to work with Azure CLI commands instead of Azure CMDLETS. But I'm still using PowerShell as my programing language for scripts.

Some modules on CLI are more "straight" than AZ or AzRM cmdlets.

Answer 9

Both are preferable because we can use either of them for writing scripts. In the case of Powershell or Azure CLI, you need to download the software in order to write scripts but Powershell is more preferred as it is an in-built tool by Microsoft. But I have also notice that giving commands through Powershell is more complex if we compare it to command prompt.

Answer 10

there is an article from MS on the topic, with following outtakes:

Feature parity for Azure services doesn't always exist between Azure CLI and Azure PowerShell.

When picking the right tool, consider your past experience and current work environment.

If you work primarily with Windows systems, Azure PowerShell is a natural fit. Commands follow a verb-noun naming scheme and data is returned as objects. If you work primarily with Linux systems, Azure CLI feels more natural.

Choose the tool that uses your experience and shortens your learning curve.