Azure Cheat Sheet

This content was generated with the assistance of AI and should be verified against the official documentation before being relied on in production.

See the section bibliography for the reference material consulted while preparing these pages.

A single-page index of quick back-links to every page in this section, grouped the same way as the section itself — handy for jumping straight to the topic you need instead of paging through the full navigation.

The downloadable PDF is a separate, single A4 page meant for printing. It states the version baseline this section targets (Azure CLI 2.90.0, Bicep 0.47.16 and azd 1.34.2) and covers:

  • the resource hierarchy (tenant, management group, subscription, resource group, resource) and regions and availability zones, plus the core az CLI essentials (login, account set, group create, --query / -o, extensions);

  • the compute decision table across Container Apps, Container Apps Express, App Service, Functions, AKS, ACI and VMs, with the matching Container Apps commands (ingress, scale rules, revisions and traffic, jobs, secrets), ACR build, and AKS create/upgrade commands (automatic SKU, node pools, ACR attach, KEDA, workload identity, Gateway API);

  • Blob Storage (tiers, redundancy, upload with --auth-mode login, user delegation SAS, lifecycle, static websites) and Front Door (profile/endpoint/route commands, purge, caching rules);

  • database create commands for Azure SQL, PostgreSQL flexible server, Cosmos DB / DocumentDB and Managed Redis, Entra authentication flags, and an engine-to-Azure-option map;

  • Key Vault (create, secret set/show, RBAC roles, reference syntax for App Service, Container Apps and the CSI driver) and App Configuration (key/value set, labels, feature flags, Key Vault references, the Kubernetes provider);

  • networking essentials (VNet, NSG, private endpoint, private DNS), the gateway decision tree, API Management tiers and key policies, and VPN Gateway (SKUs, site-to-site and point-to-site with Entra ID);

  • email with Azure Communication Services (resource, domain, connection, send, SMTP relay, quotas), monitoring (KQL one-liners, OpenTelemetry), governance and cost management (policy, locks, budgets); and

  • a retirements-and-renames strip with dates for services and SKUs being phased out.

Foundations — Cloud Concepts, Getting Started with Azure, Azure Global Infrastructure, Resource Organization, Identity and Access, and Infrastructure as Code.

Compute — Choosing a Compute Service, Azure Container Registry, Container Apps, Container Apps: Scaling, Jobs and Dapr, App Service and Azure Functions, AKS Clusters, and Deploying Microservices on AKS.

Storage and CDN — Storage Accounts, Blob Storage, and Front Door and CDN.

Managed databases — Managed Databases on Azure, Azure SQL, PostgreSQL and MySQL on Azure, Cosmos DB and Azure DocumentDB, and Redis and Partner Databases on Azure.

Security and runtime configuration — Key Vault and Secrets and Runtime Configuration.

Networking, gateways and VPN — Virtual Networks, Gateways and Load Balancing, API Management, and VPN Gateway and Hybrid Connectivity.

Email and integration — Email with Azure Communication Services and Messaging and Integration Services.

Operations, governance and beyond — Monitoring and Observability, Governance and Compliance, Cost Management, Architecture, Migration and Hybrid Cloud, AI, Data and IoT Services Overview, and Developer Tools and DevOps.

Foundry Tools — Foundry Tools (prebuilt AI services: Speech, Translator, Language, Vision, Document Intelligence, Content Understanding, Content Safety and AI Search), with its own Foundry Tools Cheat Sheet and one-page PDF.

Download the Azure Cheat Sheet (PDF)