Azure Cli Download Mac
I blogged about the Windows Azure cloud a few weeks ago. I'm digging the new stuff and trying different scenarios on Macs, PCs and Linux (I prefer Ubuntu). As a long time PowerShell and Command Line fan I'm always looking for ways to do stuff 'in text mode' as well as scripting site creations and deployments.
Turns out there are a mess of ways to access Azure from the command line - more than even I thought. There's a JSON-based Web API that these tools end up talking to. You could certainly call that API directly if you wanted, but the command line tools are damn fun.
You can install the Mac Azure SDK installer to get the tools and more on a Mac, or if you install node.js on Windows or Mac or Linux you can use the Node Package Manager (npm) to install Azure tools like this:
You can also use apt-get or other repository commands. After this, you can just run 'azure' which gives you these commands that you link together in a very intuitive way, 'azure topic(noun)verb option' so 'azure site list' or 'azure vm disk create' and the like.
Npm package - Run npm (the package manager for JavaScript) to install the Azure classic CLI package on your Linux distribution or OS. Requires node.js and npm. Installer - Download an installer for easy installation on macOS or Windows. Docker container - Start using the classic CLI.
There's even ASCII art, and who doesn't like that. ;)
Seriously, though, it's slick. Here's a sample interaction I did just now. I trimmed some boring stuff but this is starting from a fresh machine with no tools and ending with me interacting with my Windows Azure account.
- Although there was Azure CLI and PowerShell for Linux which work well on cross-platform they were still not able to provide the native experience to the Linux and Mac users. So, the idea was that the Linux user should be able to do apt get and the mac user should be able to get it from bash and use Azure seamlessly.
- Installing Azure CLI for Mac Back to installation instructions on Microsoft website, get the following code to download the Azure CLI package and install it: brew update && brew install azure-cli.
Here's how I can create and start a VM from the command line. First I'll list the available images I can start with, then I create it. I wait for it to get ready, then it's started and ready to remote (RDP, SSH, etc) into.
That's the command line tool for Mac, Linux, and optionally Windows (if you install node and run 'npm install azure --global') and there's PowerShell commands for the Windows admin. It's also worth noting that you can check out all the code for these as they are all open source and up on github at http://github.com/windowsazure. The whole command line app is written in JavaScript, in fact.
Just as the command line version of the management tools has a very specific and comfortable noun/verb/options style, the cmdlets are very 'PowerShelly' and will feel comfortable folks who are used to PowerShell. The documentation and tools are in a Preview mode and are under ongoing development, so you'll find some holes in the documentation.
The PowerShell commands all work together and data is passed between them. Here a new Azure VM configuration is created while the VM Name is pull from the list, then the a provisioning config object is passed into New-AzureVM.
Next, I want to figure out how I can spin up a whole farm of websites from the command line, deploy an app to the new web farm, configure the farm for traffic, then load test it hard, all from the command line. Such fun!
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About Scott
Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.
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The Azure REST APIs require a Bearer Token Authorization header. The docs do a great job explaining every authentication requirement, but do not tell you how to quickly get started. This post will hopefully solve that for you.
We’ll first create an Azure Active Directory Service Principal and use it in Postman to generate a Bearer Token and then call the Azure REST APIs.
Azure Setup
Note that the below configuration uses the default Service Principal configuration values. In a production application you are going to want to configure the Service Principal to be constrained to specific areas of your Azure resources. You can find more info on the configuration options in the Azure CLI Service Principal Documentation.
Get the Azure CLI
You have two options when executing Azure CLI commands:
Azure Cloud Shell
Go to Azure Cloud Shell
Local with Azure CLI
Install Azure CLI 2.0
Login
If a browser doesn’t automatically open, go to http://aka.ms/devicelogin and enter the code show in the console.
Set Active Subscription
Create Service Principal
Copy this output to a temp location, you will need the values in a minute.
Service Principal Password Reset
You can execute the following command if you ever need to reset your Service Principal password.
You can read more about Service Principals here.
Postman Setup
We are now going to use Postman to execute a REST call to get the Bearer Token and another to Get Resource Groups.
Install Postman
Install Postman, to execute the REST APIs.
Azure Cli Download Mac Installer
Close Postman
For PC Only…
The next step only works if Postman is closed. Please close Postman now.
People have reported that you don’t need to do this on Mac.
Click “Run in Postman”
Click this button:
This will open your browser and present you with two options. Select the best option for you under “Open with…” On Windows select “Open with…Postman for Windows”
Inspect Requests
You will notice that there is a new collection in Postman called “Azure REST”. Take a few minutes to inspect the requests and get familiar with them.
Get AAD Token Request
This request will POST to https://login.microsoftonline.com/{{tenantId}}/oauth2/token with our Service Principal settings and then, in the “Tests” will set a Postman Global Variable called bearerToken to the access_token in the response.
Get Resource Groups Request
This request will GET https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/{{subscriptionId}}/resourcegroups?api-version=2019-10-01 with an Authorization header set to the Bearer Token we just requested with ‘Get AAD Token’.
See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/resources/resourcegroups for latest api-version value
Set Environment Variables
When you clicked on the “Run in Postman” button Postman also created an Environment for you called “Azure REST”. You will now set your Service Principal settings in the Environment to be used in the requests.
- Click on the gear icon in the upper right hand corner of Postman and select Manage Environments.
- Click on the
Azure RESTEnvironment and you will see all the required settings.
- Enter all your settings from the Service Principal we created earlier. Here’s how they map:
az account show --query id
When you are done it will look like this with all the values filled in:
Make sure that the Azure REST Environment is selected in the Environment dropdown in the upper right hand corner of Postman.
We are now ready to execute the requests!
Execute Get AAD Token Request
First, we will execute the Get AAD Token request to get our Bearer Token and put it in a Postman global variable.
- Open the Get AAD Token request and click the Send button.
You will see the following output:
Azure Cli Download Mac Os
The access_token property is now stored a global variable, which was set in the “Tests” tab.
Execute Get Resource Groups Request
We’ll now execute any Azure REST API with that Bearer Token. Just as an exercise, we’ll execute the Get Resource Groups request.
Install Azure Cli
- Open the Get Resource Groups request and click the Send button.
You will see the following output:
That’s all there is to it. Now you can go an explore all of the Azure REST APIs and use this same method to generate the required Bearer Token Authorization header.
Please let me know if you run in to any issues.
Jon