In this article, we will learn what Microsoft Azure is and how to create and manage Windows Virtual Machine on the Microsoft Azure portal.
Today, lots of businesses or organizations are still afriad to migrate applications or data to the cloud because of the following reasons - network security, application and server downtime, server availability etc.
Well, the answer to the above fears is Microsoft Azure.
What is Azure?
Microsoft has leveraged its constantly-expanding worldwide network of information centers to make Azure, a cloud platform for building, deploying, and managing services and applications, anywhere.
Using that, you can manage Platform as a Service (PaaS) or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) which is very secure and reliable access to your cloud-hosted data.
What is Windows Virtual Machine?
Azure Virtual Machines (VM) is comprises many forms of on-demand, scalable computing resources that Azure offers. You get hold of further VMs once you want them and shut down the ones you do not want. Extended datacenter – Virtual machines in an Azure virtual network will simply be connected to your organization's network.
Windows Virtual Machine is a service of Microsoft Azure. Using that, you can -
- Create Microsoft or Linux Virtual Machines (VMs) to host your apps and services as if they are in your own data center.
- SQL databases - Manage SQL relational databases as a service. This saves expenses on hardware and software.
- Azure Active Directory Domain services - works the same as your Windows Active Directory. This service for Azure lets you remotely manage group policy, authentication, and everything else. You can move the existing security structure to the cloud as easy as in a few clicks.
- Application services - With Azure, one can create and manage globally deployed applications that are compatible with all popular web and portable platforms.
- Visual Studio Team Services with Azure DevOps - Using that, you can manage your all application lifecycle management easily.
Let's create an Azure Account first and follow the steps to create Windows Virtual Machine on the Azure portal.
Enter your Microsoft account credentials to log in.
Here, I have used my Microsoft credentials to login into the portal.
Step 1
Enter your personal details for Azure free account sign up. Microsoft will provide free credits for 30 days so you can use that for exploring.
Enter your details as shown in the below screen and click on Next.
Step 2
Enter your phone number and verify the OTP. You can select the text verification or call verification.
Step 3
Enter your card details for the verification. Don't worry about the payment as until and unless you don't accept, they won't charge you.
Last, accept the agreement details and click on Sign up.
It will open your Microsoft Azure portal Dashboard.
You will also get the email verification for the same. Now, let's follow the below steps to create your Windows Virtual Machine from the portal.
Step 1
Select the Virtual Machines from the left menu panel as shown in the below screen.
Step 2
Enter the basics details like Resource Group, Machine name, select the region where the server hosted etc.
Step 3
Enter the Administrative details that you want to set for your Virtual Machine, that is, username and password.
Step 4
Setup the Inbound port rules. For public inbound ports, set "allow selected port"s and set HTTP, HTTPS, and RDP port and click on Next button.
Step 5
From the Disks tab, select Standard HDD for the OS disk type and click on Next.
Step 6
Click "Create" to check the validation. If it passes, then you can see the message as per the below screen.
Once the machine is ready and running, you can see the registered machine name in the list of Virtual Machines.
Step 7
To connect the Windows RDP, click on the "More options" icon and select the "Connect" option.
Step 8
Save the .rdp file which is your Remote desktop connection file to connect the Virtual Machine.
Step 9
Open the file and enter the log in credentials.
That's it. Your machine is ready to use.
Hope this article will help. Thank you for reading it.
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