Azure CLI

Azure CLI is a cross-platform command-line tool that can be installed locally on development computers. Azure CLI is used to connect to Azure and execute administrative commands on Azure resources.

It is available for a variety of operating systems and Linux distributions and has multiple ways to install it.

Before you begin

General installation information is available which covers all supported Linux distributions. Starting with version 2.46.0, Azure CLI supports Arm64 Linux distributions. The ‘apt’ package manager contains both x86_64 and Arm64 packages for the following linux distributions

    

        
        Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04

        
    

Install via Azure CLI script

Confirm you are using an Arm machine by running:

    

        
        
uname -m

    

The output should be:

    

        
        aarch64

        
    

If you see a different result, you are not using an Arm computer running 64-bit Linux.

You can install Azure CLI using the following script. This script pulls required Arm64 packages and installs those on the system

    

        
        
curl -sL https://aka.ms/InstallAzureCLIDeb | sudo bash

    

Execute the following command to verify the Azure CLI is installed correctly

    

        
        
az version

    

You should see an output similar to below

    

        
        {
  "azure-cli": "2.61.0",
  "azure-cli-core": "2.61.0",
  "azure-cli-telemetry": "1.1.0",
  "extensions": {}
}

        
    

If you prefer installing the Azure CLI using Python3, follow the instructions below.

Download and Install using pip

Another way to install Azure CLI for Ubuntu on Arm is to use Python pip.

Install Python pip and create a virtual environment.

    

        
        
sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3-pip python-is-python3 python3-venv -y
python -m venv azure-cli-venv

    

Activate it and install Azure CLI.

    

        
        
source azure-cli-venv/bin/activate
pip install azure-cli

    

The pip install updates $HOME/.profile with the path the az executable. Check the executable is available by printing the version.

    

        
        
source $HOME/.profile
az version

    

You should see an output similar to below

    

        
        {
  "azure-cli": "2.61.0",
  "azure-cli-core": "2.61.0",
  "azure-cli-telemetry": "1.1.0",
  "extensions": {}
}

        
    

After a successful log in, you can use the Azure CLI and automation tools like Terraform from the terminal.