Getting familiar with Azure management tools

- [Instructor] Once you purchase Microsoft Azure, you will have a Microsoft Azure subscription. To manage the Microsoft Azure subscription, we will have to log in to the Azure Portal. So to access the Azure Portal, we will go into portal.azure.com, and now we'll have to sign in, we will have to use the same sign in account that we used in order to subscribe for the Azure subscription. So, in this case here, I will enter my email address, that is also my sign in account. I will say that this email address belongs to a work or school account because this is a professional account. You can also select a personal account if it's your Microsoft standard account. In this case here, I'm using this as part of my corporate account. Then I'll specify my password. And I'm now logged into the Azure Portal. Now, this here is the default interface for the Azure Portal. This interface changes frequently, in the sense that Microsoft updates Azure, Azure features, and Azure components, but especially the Azure interface, so it's very likely that when you log in to your Azure Portal, this interface may differ a little bit. Remember that most of the Azure functionalities will remain, and you will have access to most of the features and services that we will cover in this course. So this is the Azure Portal and it's a very standard browser-based portal. From here I can access all of the Azure services, and all the Azure services, or the functionalities, or the components of Azure that we will be adding to our Azure subscription throughout this course. As well, I can access additional Azure Portals. Now, these other portals are other management windows that we will use to manage some of those sub-services or sub-features of Azure. As well, if I go a little bit below, I see the list of my resources in Azure. So these are actual Azure components, Azure services that I've installed and configured as part of my subscription. We will do more of that throughout this course, and we will create and manage all of these resources as part of our Azure subscription. Now, what I'm using here is this browser-based management tool, some of you may want to use a more flexible command line ability to manage Azure. In order to do that, we would have to access the Cloud Shell. To access the Cloud Shell, I have a little shortcut here in my top window, and when I click on Cloud Shell you will see that a window below opens. That window gives you the ability to manage Cloud Shell using one of two interfaces, either PowerShell or Bash. Depending on your background and your expertize, you may want to use CLI or PowerShell in order to manage all of your Azure resources. So if you're familiar with using PowerShell, for example on a Windows environment, managing your servers or your desktops using PowerShell, these are very similar commands that you would use using the Azure Cloud Shell. All of the Azure PowerShell modules are already installed, and you can use all the command lists that are available within Azure. As well, if you are familiar with managing locally, you'll remember that a remote connection to Azure is still possible, so I can connect from my Windows desktop by installing the Azure PowerShell modules to my Azure subscription. This here is just the ability to do it from within the browser. So this is not a local application that's running on my desktop, this actual window here of PowerShell is really existing within my browser. Now, all of the features and the components that I'm running in here are being stored in Azure, and all the commands and the scripts that I may want to run are also in Azure. To switch to Bash I just go down to my dropdown list here, I have to confirm that all of my current scripts will be stopped to switch to Bash, and now my interface is being turned over to a Bash command. This here is the Cloud Shell that gives you the ability to manage all of your resources in Azure. You don't have to use the Cloud Shell if it's a little bit too intimidating, or you don't have a specific purpose for advanced features and functionality, you can get away by just using the management portals, such as the Azure Portal.