1) Azure Web Portal

The Azure Web Portal allows you to manage your Azure resources in a point-and-click fashion from a Web browser; access it here:

https://portal.azure.com/

For many services – including compute VMs – the Portal permits you to bring up a resource by simply filling out a form that prompts you to select values for resource parameters (such as name, size, and location). Clicking a "Create" button submits your choices and launches your new resource.

Other ways of managing resources (command line and API, below) facilitate working reproducibly and at scale, but require more learning and setup to get started.

2) Command line (local or Cloud Shell)

When you've become familiar with the basic principles of Azure VMs, the az command line tool permits you to carry out many VM infrastructure development and management tasks more quickly and efficiently than is possible via the Web Portal.

You can install Azure CLI tools to run in your Windows, Mac, or Linux environment, or you may run them in your own Docker container:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/install-azure-cli

The Azure Web Portal makes these CLI tools available in a bash shell directly in your browser:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-shell/quickstart

Microsoft's PowerShell environment, also available directly in your browser via the Portal, offers similar access to command-line Azure management tools:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cloud-shell/quickstart-powershell

3) API

The Azure Compute REST APIs permit you to manage your Azure VMs from scripts you create, using an Azure SDK. You could even have a Jupyter notebook manage the lifecycle of your VM! Here is a Quickstart guide for python.