Creating a Windows Virtual Machine on Microsoft Azure

There are finite resources to meet the infinite needs for computer resources to meet increasingly complex operations and activities like AI, Machine language, large database processing, complex graphic design and other tasks we may need.

I remember my first computer (some 20 years ago) had a storage HDD of 80MB and RAM of 4MB, then the computer capacity was adequate for the need which is typing plain documents. Today, such computer capacity will be worthless. Likewise, in many instances, we need computers with certain capabilities to meet our needs.

The question will be "How do I acquire the computer suitable for my need?" This may be a complex process as you acquire a computer system today and you need to upgrade to a higher capacity sooner than later based on requirements.

What if I tell you there is a computer warehouse where you have an endless supply of all types of computer resources and you have unlimited access to all computer resources without paying for them? Hurray!!! That's the cloud virtual machine. Azure is one of the cloud service providers that offer platforms for various services. One such service is the Virtual machine.

The Virtual Machine experience is like having dedicated hardware to yourself even though in a cloud virtual machine is an operating system image running on the server. We can use a cloud virtual machine in many ways – Development, test servers, low-traffic web servers, databases, microservices, and basic computing.

Before we dive into the various steps in creating a virtual machine on Microsoft Azure it might interest you to note that among free products provided by Microsoft Azure is 750 hours of Virtual machine

That been said lets consider the following steps for creating a virtual machine

Step 1: Log in to your Microsoft Azure account.

Step 2: Click on "Create a resource". Run a search on Virtual machine or click on Virtual machine on the "Popular Azure services" window. Then click on create

Step 3: Under Project details, you can use the default resource group or create new resource group, this is recommended.

Step 4: Under Instance details, enter Virtual machine name. I will call my own femiblog and I will chose Win 11 pro as my OS. Leave the other defaults.

Note

Region- This is where the data centre where your virtual machine will be hosted. This will be discussed in detail in a subsequent blog.
Availability options-
Security types
Image: This is the OS (operating system) for your virtual machine. For this blog, I will create a
Size: You can select from a pre-defined list of the specs for your virtual machine. You will also see the size/hardware component of your virtual machine as you want.

Step 5: Under the Administrator account, provide a username and a password. The password must be at least 12 characters long and meet the defined complexity requirements.

Step 6: Under Inbound port rules, Select the port by which the virtual machine will be accessed. For this example, I will allow RDP (3389) and HTTP (80) from the drop-down.

Step 7: Click on review and create

Step 8: After validation runs, select the Create button at the bottom of the page.

Step 9: Leave the rest to Azure to prepare your new virtual machine. This may take up to a minute or more. After deployment is complete, select Go to resource