Creating Azure Virtual Machines: Chapter 1

Virtual Machines (VM) are part of Microsoft Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). You can deploy Windows Server and Linux based workloads. By this you can get greater flexibility and full control over your infrastructure. VMs are the best way of cloud computing if you are concerned about minor things in your infrastructure. A company using Azure VM for its infrastructure might need to dedicate a person to it but it’s better than dedicating a room, power backups, high speed internet, security and lots of stuffs.

Azure VM provides us a good opportunity of scaling your system. Might be downgrading it or upgrading it. Likewise, it is same for all of the Azure Services, the more you use the more you pay and vice-versa. We can’t imagine this with physical servers in our company. No matter how much you use the investment and maintenance cost always be the same. Azure VM supports various types of workloads. From Linux based workload to Windows Server, SQL to Oracle, SharePoint to Dynamics and much more.

From this article we will start a series of Azure VM Chapters. Today we will see how to create a Windows Server in Azure VM. We will be using Preview Portal of Azure to maintain the long age of the articles.

Creating Azure Virtual Machines

Step 1: Login to the management portal https://portal.azure.com.

Azure Portal
Figure 1: Azure Portal

Step 2: Click NEW on the command bar.

Click on New
Figure 2: Click NEW

Step 3: Click Compute then on Windows Server (You can find another workload of VM at Market Place if you couldn’t find your desired edition in the list).

Select VM
Figure 3: Select VM

Step 4: Then at the bottom click Create.

Window Server 2012
Figure 4: Windows Server 2012

Step 5: On the Create VM blade, provide a host name, user name and password for the new VM.

Fill the fields
Figure 5: Fill the fields

Step 6: Click Create.

Wait for few moments and you are ready to go with your VM.

Stay tuned for more!