Azure Portal, Cloud Shell, and the Azure Mobile App

The Azure portal, Azure Cloud Shell, and the Azure mobile app are three built-in ways to manage Azure resources, each suited to a different situation. The portal is a graphical, web-based console for point-and-click configuration. Cloud Shell is a browser-hosted command-line environment that comes preloaded with Azure CLI and PowerShell so you can script without installing anything. The mobile app extends monitoring and light management, including a Cloud Shell connection, to a phone or tablet. None of them require you to install management software on your own machine.

Azure portal: the graphical console

The Azure portal is a unified, web-based interface reachable from any modern browser on any operating system. It lets you create resources through guided forms, adjust settings on existing ones, and review monitoring data, all without typing a single command. Because it runs in the browser rather than as installed software, the experience is identical whether you’re on Windows, macOS, or Linux, and there’s nothing to patch or update on your end.

One of the portal’s most useful personalization features is dashboards — customizable collections of tiles that you pin and arrange yourself. A dashboard might show a resource group’s health, a cost chart, and a handful of frequently visited resource blades, all on one screen you build around your own workflow. Dashboards are per-user by default, though they can be shared with a team, and you can maintain several of them for different purposes (an operations view, a cost view, a project-specific view). Don’t confuse dashboards with resource groups or management groups — those are organizational containers for governance, not visual, pinnable home screens.

Azure Cloud Shell: a shell with nothing to install

Cloud Shell is a browser-accessible, Microsoft-managed command-line shell. You launch it from inside the Azure portal, from shell.azure.com directly, or from the Azure mobile app, and it comes preauthenticated to your signed-in Azure session — no separate login step, no local install. It ships preloaded with a substantial toolset: Azure CLI, the Az PowerShell module, kubectl, Git, and a handful of other common utilities are already there and ready to run.

The first time you launch Cloud Shell, you’re prompted to choose between exactly two shell experiences: Bash or PowerShell. Both give you the same underlying Azure tooling; the choice is mostly a matter of which syntax style you’re already comfortable with. You can generally switch between them later within a session.

You’re also prompted, on that first launch, to create or mount an Azure file share from a storage account. This step exists because the compute instance backing a Cloud Shell session is temporary — it’s a shared, Microsoft-managed machine that gets recycled once your session ends or times out from inactivity. Nothing saved only to that machine survives. The mounted file share, attached at $Home/clouddrive, gives your session a slice of persistent storage that outlives any individual session and gets reattached automatically every time you open Cloud Shell afterward, from any device. If you leave a session idle, Cloud Shell eventually disconnects it to free up the compute instance — but anything you already saved to the mounted share is untouched by that disconnect.

Cloud Shell also includes a lightweight, browser-based code editor built into the session. It’s meant for creating and modifying files — scripts, ARM templates, Bicep files — directly inside the shell, without switching to a separate local text editor. It’s strictly an editor, though: it doesn’t compile anything or run desktop applications, and it doesn’t translate Bash scripts into PowerShell or vice versa. Running the file you just edited still happens through the shell itself.

Azure mobile app: management from a phone

The Azure mobile app, available for iOS and Android, extends a meaningful slice of portal functionality to a phone or tablet. You can monitor resource health, review Azure Monitor alerts, and perform basic management tasks without a desktop browser open. Critically, it also embeds a Cloud Shell connection, so a field technician or on-call administrator can run real Azure CLI or PowerShell commands from a phone when a laptop isn’t available. It’s a monitoring and lightweight-management companion, not a replacement for the full portal — it won’t compile Bicep locally or run a full server workload on the device.

Comparing the three interfaces

	Azure portal	Azure Cloud Shell	Azure mobile app
Interface style	Graphical, point-and-click	Command-line (Bash or PowerShell)	Graphical, touch-based
Best for	Building and configuring resources visually	Scripting, automation, quick commands	Monitoring and light tasks on the go
Requires installation	No (browser only)	No (browser only)	Yes (app install on phone/tablet)
Persistence between sessions	Portal settings/dashboards saved to your account	Requires a mounted Azure file share	Same as portal/Cloud Shell, depending on which you’re using
Access point	Any modern browser	Portal, shell.azure.com, or mobile app	iOS or Android device

How the AZ-900 exam tests this

• “Graphical vs. command-line” identification. A scenario describes wanting a visual, point-and-click way to build and monitor resources — the answer is the Azure portal, not Cloud Shell or the CLI, which are text-based.
• “No local installation” scenarios. Whenever a stem emphasizes running commands from any browser or any device without installing or maintaining tooling, that’s the signal for Azure Cloud Shell — installing Azure CLI or PowerShell locally on each machine is the wrong answer precisely because it does require local setup.
• The persistence mechanism. Questions frequently ask what must be mounted, or why, for Cloud Shell files to survive between sessions. The answer is always the Azure file share, because the compute instance itself is temporary — this trips up anyone who assumes the shell state just “stays” the way a local terminal would.
• The two Cloud Shell environments. Expect a direct question on which two shells you choose between at first launch — it’s specifically Bash and PowerShell, not Command Prompt, Zsh, or a Python REPL.
• Field/mobile scenarios. A stem describing someone away from a desktop who needs to check resource health or run a quick command points to the Azure mobile app, especially when it mentions running commands (which signals the app’s embedded Cloud Shell).

Quick reference

• The Azure portal is a graphical, browser-based console for creating, configuring, and monitoring resources visually.
• Portal dashboards are personalized, pinnable tile collections — not the same thing as resource groups or management groups.
• Azure Cloud Shell is a browser-hosted, preauthenticated shell with Azure CLI, PowerShell, kubectl, and Git preinstalled.
• Cloud Shell offers exactly two environments at launch: Bash and PowerShell.
• An Azure file share, mounted at $Home/clouddrive, must be created the first time Cloud Shell launches so files persist between sessions — the underlying compute is temporary.
• Cloud Shell’s built-in code editor is for creating and editing files in-session; it doesn’t execute or convert scripts on its own.
• The Azure mobile app (iOS and Android) supports monitoring, alerts, and light management, including an embedded Cloud Shell for running commands from a phone.

Once you’re comfortable with Cloud Shell, the next question is usually which shell to actually write your scripts in — see Azure CLI vs. Azure PowerShell for how to choose. If you’re tracking spend across the resources you manage through these tools, Azure cost management, billing, and tags covers how tagging ties into cost reporting. To put these management tools into practice, work through AZ-900 practice questions that test the portal, Cloud Shell, and mobile app scenarios directly.