During the Microsoft Ignite event Microsoft announced the general availability of Azure Cloud Shell. This shell provides a browser accessible shell for managing Azure resources from pretty much anywhere in the world. This can be accessed from many places including the Azure portal, Azure documentation, Azure mobile app and many more.
Some of the improvements include:
Faster start up time
When the shell was first previewed back in 2017 it used to take up to 120 seconds to fully load, now with all the improvements it can open in the same amount of time as a bash experience.
PowerShell Core
PowerShell has now become multi-platform and open-source. By using the Azure PowerShell and Azure Active Directory modules for PowerShell Core now in preview you can manage Azure resources in a consistent manner. By using PowerShell Core the PowerShell experience in the Cloud Shell can be used on a Linux container.
Consistent Tooling
With PowerShell being able to be ran on Linux it allows for a consistent toolset experience across PowerShell. Microsoft have now made all contents of the home directory persisted, this means setting for tools like GIT and SSH are persisted between multiple sessions.
Azure VM Remoting Cmdlets
Microsoft now have added four commands to enable remoting using PowerShell on Linux and Windows VMs using SSH and WSMAN protocols.
