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‘22124, 3:36 PM Overview of vitual machines in Azure - Azure Virtual Machines | Microsoft Learn
Virtual machines in Azure
Article + 01/03/2024
Applies to: / Linux VMs J Windows VMs ¥ Flexible scale sets
Azure virtual machines are one of several types of on-demand, scalable computing
resources that Azure offers. Typically, you choose a virtual machine when you need more
control over the computing environment than the other choices offer. This article gives you
information about what you should consider before you create a virtual machine, how you
create it, and how you manage it.
‘An Azure virtual machine gives you the flexibility of virtualization without having to buy
and maintain the physical hardware that runs it. However, you still need to maintain the
virtual machine by performing tasks, such as configuring, patching, and installing the
software that runs on it.
Azure virtual machines can be used in various ways. Some examples are:
‘* Development and test - Azure virtual machines offer a quick and easy way to create a
computer with specific configurations required to code and test an application,
‘* Applications in the cloud — Because demand for your application can fluctuate, it
might make economic sense to run it on a virtual machine in Azure. You pay for extra
virtual machines when you need them and shut them down when you don't.
‘* Extended datacenter - virtual machines in an Azure virtual network can easily be
connected to your organization's network.
The number of virtual machines that your application uses can scale up and out to
whatever is required to meet your needs.
What do | need to think about before creating a
virtual machine?
There's always a multitude of design considerations when you build out an application
infrastructure in Azure. These aspects of a virtual machine are important to think about,
before you start:
‘* The names of your resources
‘* The location where the resources are stored
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The size of the virtual machine
The maximum number of virtual machines that can be created
The operating system that the virtual machine runs
The configuration of the virtual machine after it starts
The related resources that the virtual machine needs
Parts of a VM and how they're billed
When you create a virtual machine, you're also creating resources that support the virtual
machine. These resources come with their own costs that should be considered.
The default resources supporting a
the following table:
Resource
Virtual network
Avirtual
Network
Interface Card
(nic)
A private IP
address and
sometimes a
public IP
address.
Network security
group (NSG)
OS Disk and
possibly
Description
For giving your virtual machine the ability
to communicate with other resources
For connecting to the virtual network
For communication and data exchange on
your network and with external networks
For managing the network traffic too and
from your VM. For example, you might
need to open port 22 for SSH access, but
you might want to block traffic to port 80.
Blocking and allowing port access is done
through the NSG.
It's a best practice to keep your data on a
separate disk from your operating system,
in case you ever have a VM fail, you can
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irtual machine and how they're
illed are detailed in
(2 Expand table
Cost
Virtual Network pricing
There is no separate cost for NICs.
However, there is a limit to how
many NICs you can use based on
your VM's size. Size your VM
accordingly and reference Virtual
Machine pricing
IP Addresses pricing
There are no additional charges for
network security groups in Azure,
All new virtual machines have an
operating system disk and a local
disk.
20‘22124, 3:36 PM Overview of vitual machines in Azure - Azure Virtual Machines | Microsoft Learn
Resource Description Cost
separate disks simply detach the data disk, and attach it to Azure doesn't charge for local disk
for data. a new VM. storage
The operating system disk, which is
usually 127GiB but is smaller for
some images, is charged at the
regular rate for disks
You can see the cost for attach
Premium (SSD based) and
Standard (HDD) based disks to
your virtual machines on the
Managed Disks pricing page
In some cases, a For providing your virtual machine runs to. The cost varies based on the
license forthe run the OS number of cores on your VM, so
os size your VM accordingly. The cost
can be reduced through the Azure
Hybrid Benefit
You can also choose to have Azure can create and store public and private SSH keys ~
‘Azure uses the public key in your VM and you use the private key when you access the VM
over SSH. Otherwise, you will need a username and password.
By default, these resources are created in the same resource group as the VM
Locations
There are multiple geographical regions around the world where you can create Azure
resources, Usually, the region is called location when you create a virtual machine. For a
virtual machine, the location specifies where the virtual hard disks will be stored.
This table shows some of the ways you can get a list of available locations.
© Expand table
Method Description
‘Azure portal Select a location from the list when you create a virtual machine.
‘Azure PowerShell Use the Get-AzLocation command.
REST API Use the List locations operation
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Method Description
‘Azure CLI Use the az account list-locations operation.
Availability
There are multiple options to manage the availability of your virtual machines in Azure.
‘* Availability Zones are physically separated zones within an Azure region. Availability
zones guarantee virtual machine connectivity to at least one instance at least 99.99%
of the time when you've two or more instances deployed across two or more
Availability Zones in the same Azure region
* Virtual Machine Scale Sets let you create and manage a group of load balanced
Virtual machines. The number of virtual machine instances can automatically increase
or decrease in response to demand or a defined schedule. Scale sets provide high
availability to your applications, and allow you to centrally manage, configure, and
update many virtual machines. Virtual machines in a scale set can also be deployed
into multiple availability zones, a single availability zone, or regionally.
Fore more information see Availability options for Azure virtual machines and SLA for Azure
virtual machines
Sizes and pricing
The size of the virtual machine that you use is determined by the workload that you want
to run. The size that you choose then determines factors such as processing power,
memory, storage capacity, and network bandwidth, Azure offers a wide variety of sizes to.
support many types of uses.
‘Azure charges an hourly price based on the virtual machine's size and operating system.
For partial hours, Azure charges only for the minutes used. Storage is priced and charged
separately.
Virtual machine total core limits
Your subscription has default quota limits in place that could impact the deployment of
many virtual machines for your project. The current limit on a per subscription basis is 20
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virtual machine total cores per region. Limits can be raised by filing a support ticket
requesting an increase
Managed Disks
Managed Disks handles Azure Storage account creation and management in the
background for you, and ensures that you don't have to worry about the scalability limits of
the storage account. You specify the disk size and the performance tier (Standard or
Premium), and Azure creates and manages the disk. As you add disks or scale the virtual
machine up and down, you don't have to worry about the storage being used. If you're
creating new virtual machines, use the Azure CL! or the Azure portal to create virtual
machines with Managed OS and data disks. If you have virtual machines with unmanaged
disks, you can convert your virtual machines to be backed with Managed Disks
You can also manage your custom images in one storage account per Azure region, and
use them to create hundreds of virtual machines in the same subscription. For more
information about Managed Disks, see the Managed Disks Overview.
Distributions
Microsoft Azure supports a variety of Linux and Windows distributions. You can find
available distributions in the marketplace, Azure portal or by querying results using CL,
PowerShell and REST APIs.
This table shows some ways that you can find the information for an image.
2 Expand table
Method Description
‘Azure portal ‘The values are automatically specified for you when you select an image to use,
Azure Get-AzVMImagePublisher -Location location
PowerShell Get-AzVMImageOffer -Location location -Publisher publisherName
Get-AzVMimageSku -Location location -Publisher publisherName -Offer
offerName
REST APIs, List image publishers
List image offers
List image skus
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Method Description
‘Azure CLI az vm image list-publishers --location location
az vm image list-offers --location location --publisher publisherName
az vm image list-skus ~-location location --publisher publisherName --offer
offerName
Microsoft works closely with partners to ensure the images available are updated and
optimized for an Azure runtime. For more information on Azure partner offers, see the
Azure Marketplace
Cloud-init
Azure supports for cloud-init across most Linux distributions that support it. we're
actively working with our Linux partners in order to have cloud-init enabled images
available in the Azure Marketplace. These images will make your cloud-init deployments
and configurations work seamlessly with virtual machines and virtual machine scale sets.
For more information, see Using cloud-init on Azure Linux virtual machines.
Storage
* Introduction to Microsoft Azure Storage
© Add a disk to a Linux virtual machine using the azure-cli
‘* How to attach a data disk to a Linux virtual machine in the Azure portal
Networking
* Virtual Network Overview
* IP addresses in Azure
* Opening ports to a Linux virtual machine in Azure
* Create a Fully Qualified Domain Name in the Azure portal
Service disruptions
‘At Microsoft, we work hard to make sure that our services are always available to you when
you need them. Forces beyond our control sometimes impact us in ways that cause
unplanned service disruptions.
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Microsoft provides a Service Level Agreement (SLA) for its services as a commitment for
uptime and connectivity. The SLA for individual Azure services can be found at Azure
Service Level Agreements
Azure already has many built-in platform features that support highly available
applications. For more about these services, read Disaster recovery and high availability for
Azure applications.
This article covers a true disaster recovery scenario, when a whole region experiences an
‘outage due to major natural disaster or widespread service interruption. These are rare
occurrences, but you must prepare for the possibility that there is an outage of an entire
region. If an entire region experiences a service disruption, the locally redundant copies of
your data would temporarily be unavailable. If you have enabled geo-replication, three
additional copies of your Azure Storage blobs and tables are stored in a different region. In
the event of a complete regional outage or a disaster in which the primary region isn't
ted region.
recoverable, Azure remaps all of the DNS entries to the geo-rep|
To help you handle these rare occurrences, we provide the following guidance for Azure
virtual machines in the case of a service disruption of the entire region where your Azure
virtual machine application is deployed.
Option 1: Initiate a failover by using Azure Site Recovery
You can configure Azure Site Recovery for your VMs so that you can recover your
application with a single click in matter of minutes. You can replicate to Azure region of
your choice and not restricted to paired regions. You can get started by replicating your
virtual machines. You can create a recovery plan so that you can automate the entire
failover process for your application. You can test your failovers beforehand without
impacting production application or the ongoing replication. In the event of a primary
region disruption, you just initiate a failover and bring your application in target region.
Option 2: Wait for recovery
In this case, no action on your part is required. Know that we're working diligently to
restore service availability. You can see the current service status on our Azure Service
Health Dashboard
This is the best option if you have not set up Azure Site Recovery, read-access geo-
redundant storage, or geo-redundant storage prior to the disruption. If you have set up
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geo-redundant storage or read-access geo-redundant storage for the storage account
where your VM virtual hard drives (VHDs) are stored, you can look to recover the base
image VHD and try to provision a new VM from it. This isn't a preferred option because
there are no guarantees of synchronization of data. Consequently, this option isn't,
guaranteed to work
O Note
Be aware that you don't have any control over this process, and it will only occur for
region-wide service disruptions. Because of this, you must also rely on other
application-specific backup strategies to achieve the highest level of availability. For
more information, see the section on Data strategies for disaster recovery.
Resources for service disruptions
* Start protecting your applications running on Azure virtual machines using Azure Site
Recovery
* To learn more about how to implement a disaster recovery and high availability
strategy, see Disaster recovery and high availability for Azure applications.
‘* To develop a detailed technical understanding of a cloud platform's capabilities, see
Azure resiliency technical guidance
‘If the instructions aren't clear, or if you would like Microsoft to do the operations on
your behalf, contact Customer Support
Data residency
In Azure, the feature to enable storing customer data in a single region is currently only
available in the Southeast Asia Region (Singapore) of the Asia Pacific Geo and Brazil South
(Sao Paulo State) Region of Brazil Geo. For all other regions, customer data is stored in Geo.
For more information, see Trust Center
Next steps
Create your first virtual machine!
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* Portal
© Azure CLI
* PowerShell
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