Create resources

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When managing Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL accounts using the Azure CLI, most commands will be broken down into two core CLI command groups:

  • az cosmosdb: This group contains the commands required to create and manage a new Azure Cosmos DB account.
  • az cosmosdb sql: This subgroup of the az cosmosdb group contains the commands to manage NoSQL API-specific resources such as databases and containers.

Azure Cosmos DB account group commands

To create a new account, you will need to use the az cosmosdb create command. This command only requires, at a minimum, the name of the new account to create and the target resource group for the account resource. When creating the new account, you must ensure that the name you use is globally unique to avoid the command failing due to a name conflict with another service instance.

Tip

By default, this command will create a new account using the NoSQL API.

az cosmosdb create \
    --name '<account-name>' \
    --resource-group '<resource-group>'

When creating a new account, you can also optionally specify extra parameters to control the characteristics of the newly created account. For example, this command enables the free tier and sets the default consistency level to Strong.

az cosmosdb create \
    --name '<account-name>' \
    --resource-group '<resource-group>' \
    --default-consistency-level 'strong' \
    --enable-free-tier 'true'

In most cases, you will want to specify the region where you wish to deploy your Azure Cosmos DB account. You can use the --locations argument to specify one or more target locations for your account.

az cosmosdb create \
    --name '<account-name>' \
    --resource-group '<resource-group>' \
    --locations regionName='eastus'

Later, you will learn how to specify multiple target locations while setting the appropriate failover priorities for each location.

Note

When in doubt, you can always look up the help documentation for commands by using the --help argument in these examples: az cosmosdb --help & az cosmosdb create --help.

Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL subgroup commands

The az cosmosdb sql command group contains multiple commands and subgroups to manage individual resources within the NoSQL API. For example, you can use the az cosmosdb sql database create command to create a new database within an existing account. In this example, the --name argument refers to the name of the new database, and the --account-name argument refers to the name of the account created previously.

az cosmosdb sql database create \
    --account-name '<account-name>' \
    --resource-group '<resource-group>' \
    --name '<database-name>'

The az cosmosdb sql container create command creates a new container within an existing database. The --name argument in this context refers to the name of the new container, while the --database-name argument refers to the name of the previously created database.

This creation command also requires, at a minimum, a value for the --partition-key-path argument as this argument is required for all containers in Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL.

az cosmosdb sql container create \
    --account-name '<account-name>' \
    --resource-group '<resource-group>' \
    --database-name '<database-name>' \
    --name '<container-name>' \
    --throughput '400' \
    --partition-key-path '<partition-key-path-string>'

Note

When in doubt, you can always look up the help documentation for commands by using the --help argument in these examples: az cosmosdb sql --help, az cosmosdb sql database --help, & az cosmosdb sql container --help.