Azure Documentation

1. Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following:

• An Azure subscription. If you don't have one, create a free account.
• Permissions to create resources within your subscription.

2. Deployment Methods

You can deploy Azure VMs using various methods:

• Azure Portal: A user-friendly graphical interface for creating and managing resources.
• Azure CLI: A command-line tool for managing Azure resources.
• Azure PowerShell: Another command-line tool for managing Azure resources.
• Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Templates: Declarative templates to deploy your infrastructure as code.

This documentation will primarily focus on the Azure Portal for ease of use, with references to CLI commands.

3. Deploying a VM using the Azure Portal

Follow these steps to deploy a VM:

1. Sign in to the Azure Portal: Go to portal.azure.com and sign in with your Azure account.
2. Create a resource: Click the "Create a resource" button (the plus icon in the top-left corner).
3. Search for Virtual Machine: In the search bar, type "Virtual machine" and select "Virtual machine" from the results.
4. Click Create: On the Virtual machine page, click the "Create" button.
5. Basics Tab:
   • Subscription: Select your Azure subscription.
   • Resource group: Choose an existing resource group or create a new one. A resource group is a logical container for your Azure resources.
   • Virtual machine name: Enter a unique name for your VM.
   • Region: Select the Azure region where you want to deploy your VM.
   • Availability options: Choose your desired availability options (e.g., Availability Zone, Availability Set).
   • Security type: Select a security type (Standard, Trusted launch, Confidential).
   • Image: Select an operating system image (e.g., Windows Server, Ubuntu Server).
   • Size: Choose a VM size based on your performance and cost requirements.
   • Administrator account:
     • Authentication type: Select SSH public key or Password.
     • Username: Enter a username for the administrator.
     • Password/SSH public key: Provide your credentials.
   • Inbound port rules: Select public inbound ports to allow (e.g., RDP for Windows, SSH for Linux).
6. Disks Tab: Configure your VM's storage. You can choose the OS disk type (e.g., Premium SSD, Standard SSD, Standard HDD) and add data disks if needed.
7. Networking Tab: Configure the virtual network, subnet, public IP address, and network security group (NSG) for your VM. You can create new ones or use existing resources.
8. Management, Advanced, Tags Tabs: Review and configure other settings such as monitoring, auto-shutdown, extensions, and tags as per your requirements.
9. Review + create: Once all configurations are complete, click "Review + create". Azure will validate your settings.
10. Create: If validation passes, click "Create" to start the deployment.

4. Deploying a VM using Azure CLI

Here's a basic example of deploying a Linux VM using Azure CLI:

az vm create \
  --resource-group MyResourceGroup \
  --name MyVM \
  --image UbuntuLTS \
  --admin-username azureuser \
  --generate-ssh-keys

This command creates a VM named MyVM in the MyResourceGroup using the latest Ubuntu LTS image and generates an SSH key pair for authentication.

For Windows VMs, you would typically use a password:

az vm create \
  --resource-group MyResourceGroup \
  --name MyWinVM \
  --image Win2019Datacenter \
  --admin-username azureuser \
  --admin-password YourSecurePassword123!

Note: Replace MyResourceGroup, MyVM, MyWinVM, and credentials with your desired values.

5. Connecting to your VM

After deployment, you can connect to your VM:

• Linux VMs: Use SSH. You'll need the VM's public IP address.

  ssh azureuser@

• Windows VMs: Use Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). You can download the RDP file from the Azure portal.