Configuring and Launching a Windows VM

Introduction

The Azure portal is the simplest way to configure and launch a VM in Azure. You will use a resource group created for you by the Cloud Academy Lab environment when launching your VM. Resource groups are simply a collection of resources in Azure. By creating your resources in resource groups, it is easier to manage your resources. The steps below will guide you through a configuration wizard before you actually start the VM.

Instructions

1. From the Dashboard, expand the menu clicking on the , and click on the Resource groups hub in the left window pane:

2. In the Name column click on the resource group provided by Cloud Academy.  (Note: The name follows the pattern “cal-###-##” where “cal” stands for Cloud Academy Labs):

This will make sure the proper resources are used when you configure and launch your VM. Now you are ready to configure your VM.

3. Click on Overview to make sure you are in the correct Resource group blade:

Note that several pieces of information are displayed tied to this Resource group. Such as the type of Subscription type and any Tags that have been added to help organize your Azure resources.

4. Click + Create to add a new resource to the resource group.

For this lab, you will be adding a VM. The first thing you will have to do is pick an image to base your VM on.

5. Click Create under Windows Server in the Popular Azure Services section:

6. Select Windows Server 2019 Datacenter from the drop-down menu:

7. In the Basics blade, fill out the following fields for your VM:

• Resource group: Select the cal-###-## resource group
• Virtual machine name: ca-lab-vm
• Region:
• Availability options: Select No infrastructure redundancy required
• Size: Click See all sizes > select B2s > click Select
• Username: Enter student
• Password: Enter 1Cloud_Academy_Labs!
• Confirm Password: Enter 1Cloud_Academy_Labs!

Leave the other fields at their default values. Notice that Azure allows you to enter a Windows Server license if you already have one to Save Money.

VM specifications largely consist of three key resources:

• Compute power measured in virtual CPUs (VCPUS)
• Memory measured in GB RAM
• I/O performance measured in MAX IOPS

8. Click Next: Disks and select the following options for your VM:

• OS disk type: Standard SSD

9. Click Next: Networking > and ensure the following options are configured for your VM:

• Public inbound ports: Allow selected ports
• Public inbound ports: RDP (3389)

A warning symbol is presented next to the RDP port because the port is accessible to the entire internet. That is all right for the purpose of this Lab, but in your own environment, it would be much safer to only allow your IP address access. You can hover over the tooltips for the other available settings to learn more about configuration options for VMs, but don't change their value.

10. Click Review + Create.

On the Summary that appears, notice that several supporting resources are created (new) in order to create your VM:

These include a managed disk for storing the virtual hard drive and a Virtual network. The generated network security group (firewall) allows all incoming traffic to port 3389 (RDP).

11. After a short delay while Azure validates the configuration, click Create on the Summary step.

You are taken to a deployment view where you can watch the progress of your virtual machine deployment:

Wait here until the deployment is successful (it takes around one minute):

The virtual machine transitions through several states during the deployment. By waiting for the deployment to complete you are sure to find the virtual machine in the Running state where it is completely ready to use.  

Summary

In this Lab Step, you navigated to the resource group provided for you by the Cloud Academy Lab environment. You based your VM on a Windows Server Datacenter image provided by Microsoft, along with a basic VM size with two CPUs and 4GB memory specification. After confirming basic hardware specifications and setting the login credentials you launched the VM.