Russell Smith, the Editorial Director at Petri IT Knowledgebase, has over two decades of hands-on experience in IT, in both small business settings and government IT infrastructure projects. Russell started writing for Windows IT Pro Magazine in t...
Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform provides organizations with the resources to deploy Windows Server 2012 virtual machines (VMs) quickly and with a variety of different hardware options. In this article, I will walk through the process of creating and connecting to a new Windows Server 2012 server virtual machine in Windows Azure.
If you’re completely new to Azure and just want to try it out, you can [this_link_has_been_removed] for a free one-month subscription. I’d recommend that you take this option in the first instance to make sure that Azure meets your needs.
Once you’ve successfully signed up for an Azure trial, log on to the Azure Management Portal to create a new Windows Server 2012 VM. Sign in to the management portal and then do the following.
An Affinity Group allows you to group resources so that they remain located as close as physically possible to each other for best performance.
It will take some time to provision the new VM, but you’ll see in the management portal under Virtual Machines when the new VM is ready for use. Remember that as soon as the VM is created, it is started automatically, so if you chose a pay-as-you-go subscription, your minutes start now.
Once the new VM has started, make sure it’s highlighted in the management portal and then click the Connect icon at the bottom of the portal. You then have the option to download an RDP connection file to your local machine so that you can connect remotely to the new VM. You’ll need to enter the administrator username and password you specified in the wizard.