Azure Virtual Machine Management Author: Sainath K.E.V Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Introduction: This document provides details about Managing Virtual Machines under Microsoft Azure Public Cloud. It explains in greater detail about creating storage, virtual machine and performing different Virtual Machine management actions on the Virtual Machine. Azure Management Portal: Azure Management Portal allows Users to manage Public Cloud Infrastructure which allows them to manage Web sites Virtual Machines Mobile Services Cloud Services Storage Media Services BizTalk Services Active Directory Logon to Windows Azure Portal, sign in with Hotmail / Live ID, upon login, the Management Portal is displayed as shown below.
Note: Users can view their Credit status by clicking the Credit Status option located on top of the portal which provides information regarding Credit Status and number of days remaining. This credit status would automatically reset for every month. Azure Storage Account: When creating Virtual Machines, the Management Portal automatically creates Storage Account, but Users have an option to create their Storage Account before creating their Virtual Machines / Cloud services. Azure provides Users with 3 different options for Data replication and by default Geo- Redundant option gets selected when Users create Azure Storage account. Locally Redundant Geo-Redundant Read Access Geo-Redundant
Description about the above Data Redundant / Data high availability options can be found under the link http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/documentation/articles/storage-whatis-account/ Navigate to Storage option from the Management Portal and select Create a Storage Account as shown below I have selected Cloudatlas and Southeast Asia with Geo-Redundant option for my Storage Account. Upon selecting Create Storage Account, Management portal takes a minute to create the account, Users can track the status as shown below
Users can monitor the Storage account by navigating to Storage Dashboard as shown below. The dashboard provides capabilities to Monitor the tables Monitor the blob Monitor the Queues Logging of Tables, Blob and Queues Create dedicated Containers
Azure Virtual Machine Management: Next step is to create Virtual Machine. Azure Management Portal have an option to create Virtual Machine and configure different parameters as shown below. Navigate to Virtual Machine section under the Management Portal and select Create a Virtual Machine
Users are provided with multiple options to create Virtual Machine either from Quick Create or from Gallery Quick Create: This option allows Users to create Virtual Machine with minimum information. User has to enter the unique DNS name and select the Image size, User account which gets added as administrator and Affinity Group From Gallery: This option allows Users to create Virtual Machine from Gallery which provides different options to select images, and you can select custom disks which gets uploaded to storage account. Note: Azure supports only VHD files and not VHDX.
Select the image and click on the arrow at the bottom of the page to navigate to page 2. The below wizard provides option to enter Virtual Machine Name Virtual Machine Size User Name
Note: User name cannot be Administrator The next screen provides option to select Cloud Service Cloud Service DNS Name Region / Affinity Group / Virtual Network Virtual Network Subnets Storage Account Availability Set
The next wizard allows Users to open the ports. Users are provided with the options listed below
The virtual machine gets created under Virtual Machines container as shown below. Basic Virtual Machine management can be done via Virtual Machine management task bar as shown below which allows users to perform the following actions on Virtual Machine Shutdown, Connect Restart, Attach,
Detach Disk, Capture Delete Creating New Virtual Machine: In order to create New Virtual Machine, select the New option from the Task Bar as shown below Attaching Extra Disk: There are many scenarios to have an additional disk for virtual machines, this can be achieved by Attach Empty disk option as shown below
Select the Virtual Machine Name, Storage Location, File Name and the size of the secondary disk to get created. Connecting to a Virtual Machine: Users can connect to Virtual Machine with the Connect option which will open up an RDP session to the Virtual Machine. When you select the option Connect, Users are prompted to open / save an RDP file as shown below
When select Open option, the RDP session prompts for user name and password. Enter the user name and password which you had initially used during the VM creation and click on OK. Configuring Additional Disk: Users have to configure the additional disk which they had created during the Virtual Machine creation. Navigate to Start Run compmgmt.msc Disk Management
Click Ok and right click on the Unallocated 40.00 GB Partition, select New Simple Volume
The Newly created Disk appears as shown below. When user creates an Empty disk, they gets created under Storage account. Azure creates a default folder called VHD to store the disks, Users can view the Disks by navigating to Storage Containers Click on VHD which will navigate to the below wizard
The above wizard displays the disks that I have created, User can perform the following actions on the Disks Download Edit Delete Download: Users can download the disk to their local computer by selecting the disk and click on Download option from the Task bar below, on a new page, IE prompts User to save the disk, as shown below Edit: User can edit the blob properties and metadata of the disk as shown below
Delete: This option allows user to delete the disk from the storage. Select the disk to be deleted and click on Delete option which will prompt the users with the below message
Detach and Delete Disks: Users can detach the disks which gets temporarily removed from the Virtual machine, but does not get deleted from Storage. Click on Detach Disk on the specific Virtual Machine, this would prompt User with the Storage name and attached disks as shown below Once you detach the disks, Users can safely delete the disks from Azure Management Portal. To delete the Disk, select Disk option select the Disk click on Delete option as shown below
Summary: This document explain different Azure Virtual Machine Management options which helps Users in creating / Deleting / Managing Azure Virtual Machines. In the next article I will describe on Azure Virtual Machine Networking.