Introduction
Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) offer on-demand, scalable computing resources. You can deploy and run applications and workloads on the cloud using Windows and Linux virtual machines. Azure VMs provide the flexibility to deploy a wide range of computing solutions in a flexible virtualized environment. You can use virtual machines to extend your datacenter capabilities, run applications that are difficult to migrate to the cloud, and develop and test applications in the cloud.
Azure VMs are a foundational part of Azure's Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering, allowing you to run your applications without managing the underlying physical infrastructure.
Key Benefits
- Flexibility: Choose from a wide variety of VM sizes and operating systems to meet your specific workload requirements.
- Scalability: Easily scale your compute resources up or down based on demand.
- Cost-Effectiveness: Pay only for what you use and leverage cost-saving options like Reserved Instances.
- Global Reach: Deploy VMs in Azure datacenters around the world for low latency and high availability.
- Hybrid Cloud Integration: Seamlessly integrate with your on-premises environment.
- Security: Benefit from Azure's robust security features and compliance standards.
Core Components
VM Sizes
Azure offers a vast array of VM sizes, categorized into families optimized for different workloads:
General Purpose (D-series, B-series)
Balanced CPU-to-memory ratio, ideal for testing, small-to-medium databases, and web servers.
Compute Optimized (F-series)
High CPU-to-memory ratio, perfect for medium-traffic web servers, network appliances, and batch processes.
Memory Optimized (E-series, G-series)
High memory-to-CPU ratio, suited for relational database servers, large caches, and in-memory analytics.
Storage Optimized (L-series)
Designed for high disk throughput and I/O operations, ideal for big data, SQL/NoSQL databases, and data warehousing.
GPU Optimized (N-series)
Featuring NVIDIA GPUs, for graphics rendering, video editing, AI, and machine learning workloads.
High Performance Compute (H-series)
Advanced HPC capabilities for demanding computational tasks, simulations, and modeling.
Operating Systems
You can deploy VMs running a variety of operating systems:
- Windows: Windows Server 2022, 2019, 2016, Windows 11, Windows 10, and more.
- Linux: Ubuntu Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), Debian, and others from the Azure Marketplace.
You can also bring your own custom images for maximum control.
Storage
Azure VMs utilize Azure Storage for their operating system disks and data disks:
- Managed Disks: The recommended approach. Azure manages the physical disks for you, providing higher availability and scalability. Options include Standard HDD, Standard SSD, Premium SSD, and Ultra Disk for highest performance.
- Unmanaged Disks: You manage the storage accounts for your disks (older method).
Data is persisted to these disks, ensuring your data is available even if the VM is deallocated or deleted.
Networking
Each Azure VM is deployed into a virtual network (VNet), providing:
- Private IP Addresses: For internal communication within the VNet.
- Public IP Addresses: To access the VM from the internet.
- Network Security Groups (NSGs): Act as a virtual firewall to control inbound and outbound traffic.
- Load Balancers: Distribute traffic across multiple VMs for high availability and performance.
- Application Gateways: Provide advanced routing and load balancing capabilities for web applications.
Availability Options
Ensure your applications remain available with these options:
- Availability Sets: Distribute VMs across different fault domains and update domains within a single datacenter to protect against hardware failures and planned maintenance.
- Availability Zones: Provide higher availability by spreading VMs across physically separate datacenters within an Azure region.
- Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS): Automatically scale the number of VMs up or down based on demand and provide high availability.
Common Use Cases
- Development and Testing: Quickly spin up and tear down environments for developers.
- Web Applications: Host dynamic websites and web services.
- Big Data Analytics: Run Hadoop, Spark, and other big data processing frameworks.
- Databases: Deploy SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and other database solutions.
- High-Performance Computing (HPC): Tackle complex simulations and scientific computing.
- Disaster Recovery: Replicate on-premises workloads to Azure for business continuity.
- Line-of-Business Applications: Run custom enterprise software.
Getting Started
You can create and manage Azure Virtual Machines through several tools:
- Azure Portal: A web-based graphical interface for easy VM creation and management.
- Azure CLI: A cross-platform command-line tool for scripting and automating Azure resource management.
- Azure PowerShell: A scripting environment for managing Azure resources.
- Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Templates / Bicep: For declarative infrastructure deployments.
To begin, sign in to the Azure portal and search for "Virtual machines" to create your first VM.
For detailed guides and tutorials, explore the Azure VM Deployment Guide and the extensive Azure Virtual Machines documentation.