Introduction
Cloud computing can be a complex term nowadays, as there are already many services that can run on the Cloud. Services like Data Mining, Machine Learning, Virtual Machines, API hosting for mobile applications and many other endless services are being deployed on Cloud for fast and feasible user experience.
Microsoft Azure is an open and varied Cloud platform which allows you to choose from a variety of Operating Systems and programming languages. When building an application in Azure, we would use specific types of services that would be running on one or more servers on the cloud. We can configure and create PaaS services like SQL databases, NoSQL databases, Document DB. Creating app services, and automating the Azure services using Powershell scripts is what triggers developers to use this. Here in this article, we will look into how to create a Virtual Machine and why to create a VM on Azure.
What is and why use Virtual Machine?
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A virtual machine, according to Wikipedia, "is an emulation to computer system, where emulation would mean to enable a computer system to behave like another computer system (a job of an emulator which may be physical or virtual). A virtual machine can be used on Azure platform on OS like Windows and Linux. The VMs on Azure are highly efficient, high-scale, secure and run on a virtual environment on Windows server."
Creating a VM on Azure
Once you are ready with the Azure subscription and up and running Azure portal, login to the Azure portal. You will see the dashboard.
The dashboard on the portal displays all the services added to Azure.
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Click on the New (+) tab and you will find another tabbed window displaying all the categories of services provided by Azure. The Virtual Machine is under the Compute service. The options would look like below,
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The summary also shows about the sub services. Services like Windows Server Datacenter, which is effective, application focused and user friendly.
We would be creating here a Windows Server Datacenter. Clicking on that option will ask user to configure the Virtual Machine.
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Once the configuration is added and OK is clicked, it asks the user for selecting the size of the VM. Remember, the pricing will vary based on the high-end configured size (if chosen). Here, I am choosing the minimum configuration DS1_V2 Standard with 1 core. Based on the application, we can manipulate the configuration. That is the scalable option provided by Microsoft Azure. We can scale up and scale down any time based on our requirement.
Once done, click OK. Then, the tab for optional configuration will show up. This is the 3rd step. We can move on and click OK to finalize the purchase and get the VM. Once the VM is ready, click on Connect and it downloads the RDP. Using the same username and password, we need to connect to the VM and start using the VM.
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It's up and running.
We can go ahead and configure IIS and run on the Server. You can manage your resources using the dashboard and stop the resource whenever not in use, so as to avoid consumption of your credits.