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Azure offers Virtual Machine services running Linux or Windows b= acked by a variety of different underlying hardware types and capacities.= p>
While it is possible to think of (and manage) a VM as if it were your ow= n physical computer system running under your desk or at a data center, the= re is an array of supporting services that enable you to manage your comput= e much more efficiently than is possible with traditional dedicated hardwar= e. These efficiencies promise to reduce your cloud spend and enable you to = dedicate more of your time to your primary work.
If you're new to Azure, you'll probably benefit by starting off in the A= zure Web Portal. However, taking advantage of the command line and/or the A= PI may offer much greater efficiency a lot sooner than you think. consider = revisiting these more-advanced management methods before you get too deep i= nto infrastructure deployment.
Azure will allow you to use default values for most of the dozens of con= figuration parameters. However, there are some that you must specify at the= time you create your VM:
The screenshots below illustrate a simple VM lifecycle, managed in the A= zure Web Portal: VM creation, access, and removal:
The screenshots below illustrate a simple VM lifecycle, managed from the= Cloud Shell command line: VM creation, access, and removal.
(Note: the az
command, shown below running=
in Cloud Shell, can be run locally on Windows, Mac or Linux if you install=
the Azure command line tools.)
If you wish, you may think about your VM much like a server under your d= esk or at a data center: log in, carry out many configuration and inst= allation tasks, and perhaps back up the prepared machine once you have it s= et up. This work style is available to you in the cloud.
Alternatively, you can take an infrastructure as code appr= oach and define your VM's configuration in text files. Such files can be ar= chived, version controlled, shared, and re-used:
In most cases, you can Stop your configured VM at any t= ime and Start it again later when you next need to use it.= This Deallocates most of the VM's resources so that = your VM does not incur significant costs while it's stopped.
Note that this must be done from the Web Portal, command line, or API. S= imply giving a shutdown command to the VM's OS will not deallocate the unde= rlying resources.
You may also schedule shutdown of your VM at a prescribed time.
Before relying on this, check documentation and do some tests to confirm= that disk partitions whose data needs need to preserved behave as you expe= ct after a Stop/Start cycle. This works out fine in most cases, but it's be= st to confirm in advance.
You can resize Azure VMs. For some use cases, it can be convenient and cost-effectiv= e to configure and test on a smaller VM (reduced CPUs, GPUs, and RAM), and = then resize to higher capacity at run time.
Azure provides methods for performing VM backups.
Read about Data, OS and Temporary disks, including notes r= egarding data persistence.