During this course, we will take a look at the Microsoft Azure Cross-Platform (xPlat) CLI Tool. The Azure xPlat CLI is a Node.js application that enables you to automate many common tasks within Microsoft Azure. Microsoft is developing the Azure xPlat CLI as an open source project, which is hosted on GitHub. If you run into any problems, have questions about how the tool works, or need clarification in the documentation, you can register for GitHub, and post a new issue on the issue tracker, for the Azure xPlat CLI project. The Azure xPlat CLI tool works with both the newer Azure Resource Manager (ARM) and the classic Azure Service Management (ASM) REST APIs.

Some of the common tasks that you might perform with the Azure xPlat CLI are: deploying Azure Resource Manager (ARM) JSON Templates into ARM Resource Groups, deleting Resource Groups, starting or stopping Azure IaaS Virtual Machines, deploying or deleting Virtual Machines, resizing Virtual Machines on-demand, managing Virtual Networks, Subnets, Network Security Groups (NSG), VPN Gateways, custom Route Tables, and much more!