Cannot create VM from Azure's Free Services

Question

I have a pay-as-you-go subscription on Azure which should include 12 months of free services. I try to create a new Linux VM through:

Home > Free services > Create a virtual machine

In the last step of the create virtual machine flow, pressing the Create button disables it for some seconds, indicating that something is happening, but then the button just becomes available again without any VM having been created. Clicking the button again results in the same outcome.

I've tried this with SSH as well as Password authentication for the VM, result is the same.

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi,

There is a bug in the Marketplace Free VM offer that has public IP set to Standard SKU (correct), but still has allocation set to Dynamic (incorrect). What you can do is manually create VM using correct parameters to qualify for free. To start the process you may use link below:

https://portal.azure.com/#create/Microsoft.VirtualMachine

For Linux, when creating, set

• Size: Standard_B1s
• Image: Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS - x64 Gen2
• OS disk size: 64 GiB (P6)
• OS disk type: Premium SSD (locally-redundant storage)
• Monitoring tab: Boot diagnostics: Disable

Don't enable any of the options if you want to avoid charges, for example, if you turned on Backup that has a charge associated with it.

After creating VM, please monitor costs (at least daily) by navigating to your subscription. If you used correct parameters for the VM you should not see any charges accrue related to it, except for the public IP address. Charges are delayed, so it will take typically several hours (after creation) before any would show up.

If you associate Public IP address with the VM you will be charged for this (about $3.65/month each). You can minimize the charges by dissociating it from the VM's network interface and deleting it when you are not using the VM.

When you want to use VM again you would create Public IP and associate it with VM's network interface.

You didn't ask but for Windows you would use [smalldisk] Windows Server images with P6 LRS disk.

After creating Linux VM you should expand the partition so you are using the full 64 GiB:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/linux/expand-disks?tabs=ubuntu#expand-a-disk-partition-and-filesystem

Please click Accept Answer and upvote if the above was helpful.

Thanks.

-TP