Automating Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Services

Chapter 2. Getting Started with Azure PowerShell

Installation

The Microsoft Azure PowerShell cmdlets are officially supported on Windows 2008 R2, Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, and Server 2012/2012 R2. Assuming you are running one of these operating systems (and likely later operating systems) and at least PowerShell 3.0, launch your browser and go to the Microsoft Azure home page at http://azure.microsoft.com. From there, click the Downloads link on the page; you will then see another menu for the various download types available. You, of course, are a PowerShell user, so you will want to click the link for Command Line Tools.

The installation can take several minutes because there is a dependency on the Microsoft Azure SDK, which has its own set of dependencies. For a leaner installation, the Azure PowerShell cmdlets also come as a standalone install. You can install the standalone version by going directly to the GitHub repository at http://bit.ly/azure-sdk-tools.

Setting Up Your Environment

When the installation for the cmdlets is complete, you can choose your method of running them. You can launch PowerShell either by clicking the PowerShell icon on your computer or by running powershell.exe. Another alternative is running a more interactive editor that provides features such as IntelliSense and code snippets. My preference is the latter, and the editor I will use going forward in this book is the PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE). In Windows 7 and above, the PowerShell ...