The Azure Engineer/Architect Toolkit

Updated 18-07-2026

A while back on Twitter, William Durkin (@sql_williamd) / Twitter posted a tweet asking what tools were essential on your machine and that got me thinking what mine are. This is going to be a living post so I will update as and when things change.

Here’s my list, besides Office, Visio and Windows, they are all free:

Admin Tools

Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer - For interfacing with Azure storage accounts and data lakes - (Azure Storage Explorer – cloud storage management | Microsoft Azure)
PuTTY - When you need use SSH for connecting to Unix/Linux based hosts - (Download PuTTY: latest release (0.74) (greenend.org.uk))
PowerShell - The cross-platform terminal for PowerShell development - (Get PowerShell - Microsoft Store en-GB)
- Az PowerShell module
- DBATools PowerShell module
- FabricTools PowerShell module
- Microsoft.Graph PowerShell module
- MicrosoftPowerBIMgmt PowerShell module
- PSWindowsUpdate PowerShell module
- SqlServer PowerShell module
RDTabs - When you need to have multiple active remote desktop connections at the same time - (RD Tabs (avianwaves.com))
Windows Terminal - (Get Windows Terminal - Microsoft Store en-GB)

AI Tools

ChatGPT Go/Codex - Very powerful/useful.
GitHub CoPilot Pro - Very powerful, just make sure that Agent mode is not used much and immersive chat is used instead, otherwise the monthly AI credits will be gone very quickly.
Microsoft 365 CoPilot - Suprisingly powerful and is good value if you’re already paying for M365.

Development Tools

Azure Functions Core Tools - Enables local development and publishing of Azure Functions - (Develop Azure Functions Locally by using Core Tools | Microsoft Learn)
Docker Desktop - (Docker Desktop: The #1 Containerization Tool for Developers | Docker)
HeidiSQL - DBMS Agnostic IDE (Download HeidiSQL)
Kusto Explorer - Desktop IDE for Azure Data Explorer and Microsoft Fabric (Kusto.Explorer Installation and User Interface - Kusto | Microsoft Learn)
LINQPad 5 - .NET Framework 4.7/4.8 Sandbox (Download LINQPad)
LINQPad 9 - .NET 6-10 Sandbox (Download LINQPad)
MariaDB - Local instance for MariaDB development - (Download MariaDB Server - MariaDB.org)
Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio - IDEs for MSSQL development - (Download SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) - SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) | Microsoft Docs)
Microsoft SQL Server Developer Enterprise Edition 2025 - Local instance for MSSQL Development (SQL Server Developer Enterprise Edition)
Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2026 - All workloads installed - (Visual Studio IDE, Code Editor, Azure DevOps, & App Center - Visual Studio (microsoft.com))
- The following extensions installed:
  - Angular Language Service 2022
  - Azure Data Lake and Stream Analytics Tools
  - Bicep for Visual Studio
  - Live Share
  - Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit
  - Microsoft Analysis Services Projects
  - Microsoft RDLC Report Designer
  - Microsoft Reporting Services Projects
  - Microsoft Visual Studio Installer Projects
  - ML.Net Model Builder
  - Single-project MSIX Packaging Tools
  - SQL Server Integration Services Projects
  - Template Studio for UWP
  - Template Studio for WinUI (C#)
  - Template Studio for WPF
Microsoft Visual Studio Code - (Visual Studio Code - Code Editing. Redefined)
- The following extensions installed (NB - Some of these are dependencies rather than being installed directly):
  - .NET Install Tool
  - Angular Language Service
  - ARM Template Viewer
  - Azure Account
  - Azure API Management
  - Azure App Service
  - Azure CLI Tools
  - Azure Container Apps
  - Azure Cosmos DB
  - Azure Developer CLI
  - Azure Functions
  - Azure IoT Hub
  - Azure Load Testing
  - Azure Logic Apps (Consumption)
  - Azure Logic Apps (Standard)
  - Azure Machine Learning
  - Azure Machine Learning (Remote)
  - Azure MCP Server
  - Azure Policy
  - Azure Pipelines
  - Azure Repos
  - Azure Resource Manager
  - Azure Resources
  - Azure Sphere
  - Azure Sphere UI
  - Azure Static Web Apps
  - Azure Storage
  - Azure Stream Analytics
  - Azure Tools
  - Azure Video Analyzer
  - Azure Virtual Machines
  - Azurite
  - Bicep
  - C/C++
  - C#
  - C# Dev Kit
  - CMake
  - CMake Toosl
  - CodeQL
  - compareit by in4margaret - Allows you to compare two files side-by-side so you can see the difference
  - Containert Tools
  - Data Table Renderers
  - Data Workspace
  - Data Wrangler
  - Databricks
  - Databricks for SQLTools
  - Databricks Power Tools
  - Dev Containers
  - Docker
  - Docker DX
  - Fabric Data Engineering VS Code
  - Fabric Data Engineering VS Code - Remote
  - Foundry Toolkit for VS Code
  - GitHub Copilot for Azure
  - GitHub Pull Requests
  - GitHub Repositories
  - HashiCorp Terraform
  - HTTPS/s amd relative link checker
  - isort
  - JSTool by sunjw - Formats JSON documents
  - Jupyter
  - Jupyter Cell Tags
  - Jupyter Keymap
  - Jupyter Notebook Renderers
  - Jupyter Slide Show
  - Kubernetes
  - Learn Authoring Pack
  - Live Preview
  - Live Share
  - markdownlint
  - Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit
  - Microsoft Edge Tools for VS Code
  - Microsoft Entra External ID
  - Microsoft Terraform
  - MongoDB for VS Code
  - MySQL Shell for VS Code
  - parquet-viewer
  - PHP Extension Pack
  - Poor Man’s T-SQL Formatter by Tao Klerks
  - PostgreSQL
  - Power Platform Tools
  - PowerShell
  - Prettier
  - Python
  - R
  - Rainbow CSV
  - React Native Tools
  - Remote - SSH
  - Remote - SSH: Editing Configuration Files
  - Remote Development
  - REST Client
  - SARIF Viewer
  - Scala Syntax
  - Security Intellisense
  - SharePoint Embedded
  - SQL Bindings
  - SQL Database Projects
  - SQL Server (mssql)
  - SQLTools
  - vscode-pdf
  - WSL
  - YAML by RedHat
MySQL Community Edition - Local instance for MySQL development - (MySQL :: Download MySQL Community Server)
MySQL Workbench - IDE for MySQL databases - (MySQL :: Download MySQL Workbench)
PGAdmin - IDE for PostgreSQL databases - (Download)
PostgreSQL - Local instance for PGSQL development - (EDB: Open-Source, Enterprise Postgres Database Management)
Python - Local instance installed
Windows SubSystem for Linux
- Ubuntu instance configured

General Tools

Bitwarden for Password Management - (Bitwarden Open Source Password Manager | Bitwarden)
- They have a free tier
- Desktop/Mobile apps and browser addons available
Brave
DuckDuckGo
Google Chrome
Microsoft Edge
- The following extensions installed:
  - Az Mask Addon - You can hide your tenant/subscription ids when using the portal in your demos - (Az Mask - Microsoft Edge Addons)
  - Microsoft Editor - Really useful for improving that standard of your writing - (Microsoft Editor: Spelling & Grammar Checker - Microsoft Edge Addons)
  - AdGuard Ad Blocker - Really makes browsing the web much simpler - (AdGuard AdBlocker - Microsoft Edge Addons)
Microsoft Office 365 incl. Microsoft Teams
Microsoft To-Do - Easy way of keeping track of day-day tasks
Microsoft Visio 365
- Highly recommend the Microsoft provided stencils for Azure for architecture diagrams
Mozilla Firefox
Opera
paint.Net - Free image editing tool - (Paint.NET - Download (getpaint.net))
- The following extensions installed:
  - Align Object - (Align Object - Plugins - Publishing ONLY! - paint.net Forum (getpaint.net))
  - ICO/Cur Format - (Icon, Cursor, and Animated Cursor Format v3.7 (May 2010) - Page 13 - FileType Plugins - paint.net Forum (getpaint.net))
  - Photoshop Document Format - (Paint.NET PSD Plugin | Paint.NET PSD Plugin)
PortQryUI - Useful for diagnosing network connectivity over specific ports - (Download PortQryUI - User Interface for the PortQry Command Line Port Scanner from Official Microsoft Download Center)
PowerToys for Windows - The extra functionality for Windows you didn’t think you needed. Personal favourites - Color Picker, Cursor Finder and Text Extractor (microsoft/PowerToys: Windows system utilities to maximize productivity (github.com))
SysInternals Suite - Lots of useful Windows administration tools - (Sysinternals Utilities - Windows Sysinternals | Microsoft Docs)
- TCPView - Useful for diagnosing network connectivity problems
- ZoomIt - Extremely useful when giving demos
Vivaldi
Windows 11 Pro or Enterprise
WinSCP - A clean SFTP client - (WinSCP :: Official Site :: Free SFTP and FTP client for Windows)