In this blog post, you will understand how to create a Windows Virtual Machine using Microsoft Azure and access from your local machine. To create a Virtual Machine you need to have access to the Azure Portal i.e.,
www.portal.azure.com. To have access to the Azure Portal, you need to have an Azure account with a Subscription. In case you don’t have an account, go to
Azure Portal
Requirements
- Azure Account with minimum free trial subscription ( Dream Spark doesn’t support this).
Step 1 - Create a virtual machine on Azure Portal
Go to
Azure Portal. Click New and select Virtual Machines. Select Windows Server 2012 R2 Data Center and don't forget to select Resource Manager as a deployment model.
Click create and then you need to fill out some details related to the virtual machine, which you want to create. Here, you can see, how it looks like:
Configure Basic Settings
You will be specifying a name to Virtual Machine, your disk type, username, password and the location of your Data Center.
Once the details are filled, click OK to move to the next step.
Choosing Virtual Machine Size
In this step, it will ask you to select the size of the virtual machine and you will be able to see some of the recommended sizes, in addition to the features of the virtual machine.
Click Select and it will navigate you to the next step.
Configure Optional Features
In this step, it will ask you to specify a name to the storage account (by default, it takes some name), virtual network & Public IP address.
It’s always good to create a new one. Let us do the same thing by creating a new storage account and fill out all the necessary details.
Click OK. Go to the last step, which is nothing but a summary of all the details of the Virtual Machine, we want to create. Once we click OK, the virtual machine will go for the deployment and when it is done, you will get a notification on Azure portal, that your Virtual Machine is successfully created and a message is called as validation passed.
In case, you have selected an option pin on the dashboard, you will be able to see a tile on the dashboard.
Step 2 - Connecting to the Virtual Machine
Now, click on the tile WindowsVM (in case, you have given the same name as me), you will able to see an option as connect. Click it and it will ask you to download a remote desktop file. Click save.
Go to downloads folder, select RDP file and right click it, you will “connect” option, click it. It will be asking you for the username and password, give them and you can connect to the virtual machine.
Give your username and password. You will be able to connect to the virtual machine. Some of the screenshots after connecting to the virtual machine can be seen here.
PS: These screenshots are taken in the virtual machine and then copied into my machine. It is easy to create a Virtual Machine, using Microsoft Azure.