Quickstart: Create a Windows Virtual Machine using the Azure portal

This guide walks you through the process of creating a Windows virtual machine (VM) in Azure using the Azure portal. Azure Virtual Machines gives you the flexibility of virtualization for a wide variety of computing workloads. Deploying a Windows VM in Azure is a common scenario.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, you need an Azure account with an active subscription. If you don't have one, you can create a free account before you start.

Sign in to Azure

1.

Open your web browser and navigate to the Azure portal. Sign in with your Azure account credentials.

Create a Virtual Machine

2.

In the Azure portal search bar at the top, enter "Virtual machines" and select Virtual machines from the search results.

Screenshot of Azure portal search bar highlighting "Virtual machines"
3.

On the Virtual machines page, click + Create and then select Virtual machine.

Screenshot of Virtual machines page with "+ Create" button highlighted

Basics Tab

4.

On the Create a virtual machine page, under the Basics tab, fill in the following fields:

Screenshot of the "Basics" tab with fields filled

Disks Tab

5.

Click on the Disks tab. For this quickstart, you can accept the default disk settings. A OS disk type of Premium SSD is recommended for better performance.

Screenshot of the "Disks" tab

Networking Tab

6.

Click on the Networking tab. You can accept the default network settings. Azure will create a virtual network, subnet, public IP address, and network security group for you.

Screenshot of the "Networking" tab

Management, Advanced, and Tags Tabs

7.

For this quickstart, you can leave the default settings for the Management, Advanced, and Tags tabs. You can explore these options for more advanced configurations later.

Review and Create

8.

Click on the Review + create tab. Azure will validate your configuration.

Screenshot of the "Review + create" tab before validation
9.

Once validation passes, review the summary of your VM configuration. If everything looks correct, click Create.

Screenshot of the "Review + create" tab with validation passed and "Create" button highlighted

Connect to the Virtual Machine

10.

Deployment can take a few minutes. Once the deployment is complete, navigate to the virtual machine resource. You can find your VM by searching for its name in the Azure portal search bar.

Screenshot of the VM deployment progress page
11.

On the VM's overview page, click the Connect button, then select RDP.

Screenshot of the VM overview page with "Connect" button highlighted
12.

Download the RDP file. Open the downloaded file and click Connect.

Screenshot of the RDP connection dialog
13.

When prompted, enter the username and password you created in Step 4. You might see a certificate warning; click Yes to proceed.

Tip: If you encounter issues, ensure you have allowed RDP (port 3389) through your network security group.

You should now be connected to your Windows virtual machine in Azure!

Clean up resources

When you no longer need the virtual machine and its associated resources, you can delete the resource group. Deleting the resource group will remove the VM, the virtual network, the public IP address, and other related resources.

  1. In the Azure portal, go to Resource groups.
  2. Select the resource group you created for this VM (e.g., myResourceGroup).
  3. On the resource group page, click Delete resource group.
  4. Confirm the deletion by entering the resource group name and clicking Delete.
Screenshot of deleting a resource group