What is Azure Command Line Interface (CLI)?

Definition: Azure CLI is a Command-Line tool that is used to connect to Azure and perform administrative commands that let you create and manage Azure resources.

• Azure CLI commands can work on Windows, Linux, macOS. That’s why they are Cross-platform
• Azure CLI can be run in multiple Shell environments likeWindows PowerShell, Command Prompt, Bash, Power Shell
• You can install Azure CLI on your local computer having
  • macOS,
  • Linux or
  • Windows operating system.
• Azure CLI can also be used
  • Via browser using Azure Cloud Shell or
  • Run commands from Docker Container.
• Automation becomes very easy by using Azure CLI. To Automate, you can put together all the tasks/commands into a shell script and run that script.
• JSON is the default output for an Azure CLI command though it supports other outputs as well like, JSONC, YAML, table, tsv.
• Before using Azure CLI for running commands, just make sure that you are using the latest Azure CLI.

What is Azure Classic CLI?

• Earlier Azure CLI versions (1.x and lower) are called Azure Classic CLI.
• To avoid any confusion, Microsoft has stopped adding the version numbers, so the Azure CLI versions 2.0 and above are called Azure CLI and Azure CLI 1.x and below are called Azure Classic CLI.
• If you are using Azure classic CLI, then it is advisable to move/migrate to the latest Azure CLI version.