STEP BY STEP ON HOW TO DEPLOY AND CONNECT A VIRTUAL MACHINE ON AZURE CLOUD.

TABLE OF CONTENT

Introduction
Logging In
Step 1 Configure Basic Settings
Step 2 Configure Disk and Storage
Step 3 Networking
Step 4 Management
Step 5 Monitoring
Step 6 Review + Create

INTRODUCTION

There are various steps associated with the deployment and connection of a virtual machine in Azure cloud. We will be listing the various steps to deploy a virtual machines with images detailing those processes. With Azure Virtual Machine, you get the flexibility of accessing a virtual platform without buying and maintaining the physical hardware that can run the operation. But you will also need a proper maintenance plan for your Azure Virtual Machine while performing tasks like configuring, patching, parsing, and installing the softwares to run on the virtual machines.

Below are guidelines on how to configure your Virtual machine:

LOG IN:

Logging into Azure Portal, if you do not have an azure account, you will need to sign up for one.
Open your web browser and navigate to https://portal.azure.com.
Sign in using your Azure account credentials.

Select a Resource via the create a resource tab.

Showing the project details, this is a guide to build the various components of the virtual machine from various tabs as highlighted in the above diagram.

STEP 1. CONFIGURE BASIC SETTINGS

This tab enables you to do the following:

a. Select subscription and create a Resource Group

b. Identify the Virtual Machine instance details:
(Virtual Machine name, pick the region you want your Virtual Machine to be provisioned, select your preferred availability zone or availability options. You can pick more than one availability zone.

c. Images: Enables you to choose an operating system for your virtual machine and there are several ones you can choose from. See below diagram.

For this Virtual machine we have using the linux 8.8.

d. Size: This enables you to choose your Virtual Machine configuration. Under “Size,” select the appropriate configuration for your VM based on CPU, memory, and storage requirements.
Carefully review the available sizes and consider your workload needs. See below:

e. Administrator Account: An admin account needs to the created for the virtual machine for easy access to log in when required. This can be deployed in two ways Authenticator types.

• SSH KEY

• PASSWORD

A username and Password is also required to gain access:

f. Inbound Port Rules: Enables you to select ports. The inbound port rules can be changed on the networking tab in the virtual machine.

STEP 2. CONFIGURING DISK AND STORAGE

Under “Disks,” choose the OS disk type (Standard HDD, Standard SSD, Premium SSD).
Adjust the OS disk size according to your needs.
Note: Choose Standard SSD for practice purposes

STEP 3. NETWORKING:

This tab enables you to do the following:
a. Choose an existing virtual network and subnet or create new ones.
b. Assign a public IP address if needed.
c. Configure network security groups to control traffic.
Here you can control ports, inbound and outbound connectivity with security rules or place behind an existing load balancing solution.

STEP 4. MANAGEMENT:

The management tab is where you create management groups in Azure inform of Hierarchy.You organize subscriptions into containers called management groups and apply governance conditions to the management groups. All subscriptions within a management group automatically inherit the conditions applied to the management group, the same way that resource groups inherit settings from subscriptions and resources from resource groups. Management groups give you enterprise-grade management at a large scale, no matter what type of subscriptions you might have. Management groups can be nested.

HIERARCHY: This hierarchies are done to show the structures of the management layers in Azure for easy management of resources and also to ensure billing are also properly allocated and managed with the Azure resource. Find below some of the hierarchies:

1. ROOT MANAGEMENT GROUP(PARENT): This is at the top of the management layer, it can be classifies as the base or foundation of the management group.You can build a flexible structure of management groups and subscriptions to organize your resources into a hierarchy for unified policy and access management.

2. CHILD MANAGEMENT GROUP: These are subset of the root management groups. 10,000 child management groups can be supported in a single directory.
   A management group tree can support up to six levels of depth. This limit doesn’t include the root level or the subscription level.
   Each management group and subscription can support only one parent.

3. SUBSCRIPTION: Resource groups are arranged into subscriptions for each management and billing purposes as well. It is a logical container used in managing resources in Azure. It holds details of the resources in Azure like VM, Databases, Networks, storage accounts etc.

4. RESOURCE GROUPS: A resource group is a container that holds related resources for an Azure solution. Resource groups can be used to coordinate changes to related resources, such as deploying updates or deleting resources. For example, if a user deploys an update to a resource group, they can be confident that all the resources in the group will be updated in a coordinated way. When a user is finished with a solution, they can delete the resource group and know that all the resources will also be deleted.

5. RESOURCES: Resources are instances of services that you build, such as virtual machines, storage, and SQL databases.

Below are graphical illustrations to show the management groups as discussed above.

STEP 5. MONITORING:

In this unit, you explore Azure monitoring capabilities for VMs, and the types of monitoring data you can collect and analyze with Azure Monitor. Azure Monitor is a comprehensive monitoring solution for collecting, analyzing, and responding to monitoring data from Azure and non-Azure resources, including VMs. Azure Monitor has two main monitoring features: Azure Monitor Metrics and Azure Monitor Logs.

A shown in the above diagram, you can set up your alert rules for your virtual machine.

STEP 6. CREATE & REVIEW:

This tab is for the final setting up of your Virtual Machine

Your Virtual machine is created once validation is passed then you proceed to create VM.
See Below:

To connect your Virtual Machine, you go to the resource tab and click on connect resource, click on connect and your virtual machine will be connected, see diagram below: