Setting Subscription used inside Azure Cloud Shell

January 8, 2020 #azure #cli #powershell #cloudshell

This week I am attending some Azure Architect training, listening to some lectures, and doing some labs. The course includes Azure credits provided as an Azure Sponsorships subscription, which meant I don’t need to use any of my monthly MSDN credits - unless I do something wrong - which I did.

When I first set up Azure Cloud Shell it used my oldest subscription - so old that it includes “Windows Azure” in the name and was activated in 2014.

Windows Azure MSDN - Visual Studio Premium

My cloud-shell-storage-eastus is in that subscription, and when I log into the Azure Cloud Shell, it is the default subscription for any resource groups I create. I realized this after creating some things, but not before too long. I learned is you can set the active subscription from inside the Azure Cloud Shell using both the Azure CLI and PowerShell.

Get-AzContext and Get-AzSubscription give us some useful information, including the subscription identifiers.

Azure:/
PS Azure:\> Get-AzContext | Select-Object -Property Name, Subscription, Tenant | Format-List

Name               : Windows Azure  MSDN - Visual Studio Premium (11111111-1111-4000-11111111111111111) - MSI@50342
Subscription       : 11111111-1111-4000-11111111111111111
Tenant             : 00000000-0000-4000-00000000000000000

Azure:/
PS Azure:\> Get-AzSubscription | Select-Object -Property Id, Name, TenantId | Format-List

Id                        : 11111111-1111-4000-11111111111111111
Name                      : Windows Azure  MSDN - Visual Studio Premium
TenantId                  : 00000000-0000-4000-00000000000000000

Id                        : 22222222-2222-4000-22222222222222222
Name                      : Azure Pass - Sponsorship
TenantId                  : 00000000-0000-4000-00000000000000000

Set-AzContext lets me set 22222222-2222-4000-22222222222222222 as the default.

Azure:/
PS Azure:\> Set-AzContext -SubscriptionId 22222222-2222-4000-22222222222222222

However, that only affects PowerShell cmdlets and not the Azure CLI commands. Running az account list shows the default subscription for the Azure CLI is still 11111111-1111-4000-11111111111111111.

Azure:/
PS Azure:\> az account list --query "[].{Id:id,IsDefault:isDefault,Name:name,TenantId:tenantId}"
[
  {
    "Id": "11111111-1111-4000-11111111111111111",
    "IsDefault": true,
    "Name": "Windows Azure  MSDN - Visual Studio Premium",
    "TenantId": "00000000-0000-4000-00000000000000000"
  },
  {
    "Id": "22222222-2222-4000-22222222222222222",
    "IsDefault": false,
    "Name": "Azure Pass - Sponsorship",
    "TenantId": "00000000-0000-4000-00000000000000000"
  }
]

I would need to use az account set with the --subscription parameter to use my “Azure Pass - Sponsorship” subscription.

Azure:/
PS Azure:\> az account set --subscription 22222222-2222-4000-22222222222222222

Now I need to remember to do these steps every time I start an Azure Cloud Shell.