Analyze existing hardware specs
Cloud / Knowledge library
Azure Virtual Machines
Runs Windows and Linux virtual machines with selectable sizes, disks, and networking
Why learn Azure Virtual Machines?
Teams use Azure Virtual Machines to adopt virtual machine compute without building the complete underlying platform themselves.
The problem it solves
Runs configurable operating-system virtual machines
Where it came from
Azure Virtual Machines is Microsoft Azure's offering for virtual machine compute. Its closest catalog counterparts are Amazon EC2 and Google Compute Engine; they address the same broad need but are not feature-for-feature identical.
Build your understanding
Work through these exercises in order. Try the task before opening a reference.
- Explain the main responsibility of Azure Virtual Machines.
- Choose a workload that fits Azure Virtual Machines.
- Identify one operational tradeoff of Azure Virtual Machines.
- Compare Azure Virtual Machines with Amazon EC2.
- Compare Azure Virtual Machines with Google Compute Engine.
Documentation and sources
- Microsoft Azure product catalog (azure.microsoft.com)
Connect the ideas
Alternatives
Real World Example
Legacy Application Migration to Azure Virtual Machines
Enterprises maintaining legacy monolithic applications requiring specific OS-level configurations.
The business problem
On-premises hardware lifecycle expiration and lack of physical space for server maintenance.
How this topic solves it
Azure Virtual Machines provide a flexible IaaS environment to lift-and-shift legacy workloads, allowing for selectable sizes, disks, and networking configurations that mirror existing infrastructure requirements.
- Assess existing on-premises server resource requirements including CPU, RAM, and storage IOPS.
- Select an appropriate Azure Virtual Machine size that matches the identified performance profile.
- Configure virtual network interfaces and subnets to maintain existing connectivity patterns.
- Attach managed disks to the virtual machine to host the operating system and application data.
- Deploy the virtual machine using the Azure portal or CLI to initialize the environment.
The flow shows the progression from resource assessment to the final operational state of the VM.
Choose VM size and disk type
Define VNet and subnet rules
Provision the VM instance
- Assessment → determines → Selection
- Selection → configures → Networking
- Networking → executes → Deployment
Expected business outcome
Successful migration of legacy applications to a managed cloud environment with preserved configuration parity.
Limitations and checks
Virtual machines require manual operating system patching and maintenance, which can be verified by checking the OS update status and system logs.