In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is an emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardware, software, or a combination (Wikipedia). In this post, I will explain how to create a new virtual machine on Microsoft Azure. Following are the steps:
Please login using your Azure account at http://portal.azure.com. If you don’t have an account, please register first, or if you are a student, you can use academic e-mail to get Azure for free. Following are the steps to redeem Azure for Students Starter Pack.
If you already login into Microsoft Azure, please click Create Resource -> Compute -> See All. There are various choices of services and operating systems that we can use from Windows to Linux. In this post, we will try to create a VM with the Ubuntu Server operating system version 18.04 LTS.
Please select the Ubuntu Server operating system then select version 18.04 LTS and click Create. Next, we will configure the new VM that will be created. Following are the steps for configuring a VM on Azure:
- In the Basic tab section, we will set the profile of the project we will create. Make sure the selected Subscription is correct then click create new to create a new Resource Group.
2. In the Instance details section, we will configure the VM name setting, choose Region and size from the VM we will create.
3. There are various choices of size packages with a variety of prices offered. To change the size of the VM, please click Change Size. Here is an example of some VM size packages offered.
For experiments, I will change the size of the VM to B2s. But this is adjusted to your needs.
4. Next, in the Administrator Account section, we will configure the account to log in to the Virtual Machine. Here I use the Authentication Type option with a Password. Please fill in the desired username and password.
5. Next in the Inbound Port Rules section, please choose HTTP with SSH so that the VM we create can be accessed via HTTP and SSH ports.
6. Then switch to the Disks tab, here we can configure to select the type of storage media to be used. Will it use SSD or HDD. On this tab, I don’t make any changes. If it is appropriate, please click Review + Create.
7. This is the appearance of the Review, if it is appropriate, please click Create, then the VM creation process will run. Wait until the VM creation process is complete, this process will take around 5 minutes.
8. If the VM creation process is complete then we can access it in the All Resource section Menu on the left. Please click the Virtual Machine that we have created before to see our VM details and settings.
9. In this page, we can do various configurations on the VM. At the tab overview, there is a description of the Public Ip Address, this is our VM IP address. With this IP we can connect and access our VM from the client side.
After we have successfully created a Virtual Machine in Microsoft Azure, now let’s try to access our VM using SSH. Please open the Command Prompt or Terminal then type ssh <space> username @ ip_address. Then type the password that was created earlier.
The following is the SSH display when successfully connected to a Virtual Machine.
