Exercise - Create a VM using the Azure portal

  • 15 minutes

You've planned out the network infrastructure and identified a few VMs to migrate to the cloud. You have several choices for creating your VMs. The choice you make depends on the environment you're comfortable with. Azure supports a web-based portal for creating and administering resources. You can also choose to use command-line tools that run on Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Options to create and manage VMs

Let's explore the Azure portal first - it's the easiest way to start with Azure.

Azure portal

The Azure portal provides an easy-to-use browser-based user interface that enables you to create and manage all your Azure resources. For example, you can set up a new database, increase the compute power of your virtual machines, and monitor your monthly costs. It's also a great learning tool, because you can survey all available resources and use guided wizards to create the ones you need.

Create an Azure VM with the Azure portal

Let's assume you want to create a VM running a web server on Ubuntu. Setting up a site isn't difficult, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind. You need to install and configure an operating system, configure a website, install a database, and worry about things like firewalls. We're going to cover creating VMs in the next few modules, but let's create one here to see how easy it is. We don't go through all the options - check out one of the Create a VM modules to get complete details on each option.

  1. Sign in to the Azure portal using the same account you used to activate the sandbox.

  2. On the Azure home page, under Azure services, select Create a resource. The Create a resource pane appears, displaying popular products for Azure services.

    Screenshot that shows the Create a resource page.

  3. We want to create a VM, so select Virtual machine.

  4. The Create virtual machine pane appears.

Configure the VM

You need to configure the basic parameters of your virtual machine. If some of the options at this point are unfamiliar to you, that's OK. We're going to describe all of these options in a future module. You're welcome to copy the values used here.

  1. On the Basics tab, enter the following values for each setting.

    Setting Value
    Project details
    Subscription Concierge Subscription
    Resource group Select [sandbox resource group name] from the drop-down
    Instance details
    Virtual machine name Enter test-ubuntu-cus-vm
    Region From the dropdown list, select a geographical location close to you.
    Availability options No infrastructure redundancy required
    Security type Standard
    Image Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS - Gen2
    VM architecture x64
    Run with Azure Spot discount Unchecked
    Size Standard D2s V3
    Administrator account
    Authentication type SSH public key
    Username Enter a username
    SSH public key source Generate a new key pair
    Key pair name test-ubuntu-cus-vm_key
    Inbound port rules
    Public inbound ports Allow selected ports
    Select inbound ports SSH (22)

  2. There are several other tabs you can explore to see the settings you can influence during the VM creation. After you're finished exploring, select Review + create to review and validate the settings.

  3. Azure validates your configuration settings for a resource before it creates it. You might need to supply some additional information based on the requirements of the image creator built into Azure. It's simple; just open the tab that has an error. Verify all the settings are set the way you want, and then select Create to deploy and create the VM.

  4. The Generate new key pair window opens. Select Download private key and create resource.

  5. You can monitor the deployment in the Deployment details on the Overview pane or through the Notifications pane. Select the notifications icon in the top right toolbar to show or hide the Notifications pane.

    Screenshot showing the notifications icon on toolbar and part of the notifications pane.

    The VM deployment process takes a few minutes to complete. You receive a notification informing you that the deployment succeeded.

  6. Select Go to resource. The Overview page of your VM appears.

    Here, you can see all the information and configuration options for your newly created Ubuntu VM. One of the pieces of information is the Public IP address.

    Screenshot showing VM essentials and properties with the public IP address highlighted.

    When you enabled SSH public key authentication in an earlier step, the user interface also gave an option to enable SSH. SSH allows you to connect to your VM via the public IP using any SSH client.

Congratulations! With a few steps, you deployed a VM that runs Linux. Let's explore some other ways we could have created a VM.