Source: youtube.com/watch?v=eUrBff0kdaA

What is Azure

Azure is a Microsoft cloud computing service for application management via Microsoft-managed data centers. It offers software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS), as well as support for a wide range of programming languages, tools, and frameworks, including Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems. It uses large-scale virtualization in Microsoft data centers around the world and provides over 600 services. Microsoft Azure offers a variety of computing services. One of them is the "Azure Virtual Machine." So, in this blog, I will talk about Virtual Machines in Azure.

What is Azure Virtual Machine

Before proceeding to Azure VM, it is necessary to define a VM (Virtual Machine). A virtual machine is a computer file, commonly referred to as an image, that acts like a real computer. It can run in a separate computing environment in a window, often to run a different operating system, or even to function as the user's entire computer experience, as is common on many people's work computers.

Azure Virtual Machines are on-demand computing resources in Azure that fall under the Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas) category. Azure services are primarily used in various organizations to build and develop cloud-based solutions. It is one of the services provided by Azure to create your own instances. Virtual machines can be created and managed using the following tools:

• Azure Portal
• Azure PowerShell and ARM templates
• Azure CLI
• Client SDKs
• REST APIs

Why should you use Azure Virtual Machine?

An Azure VM provides the flexibility of virtualization without the need to purchase and maintain the physical hardware that powers it. However, you must still keep the VM running by configuring, patching, and installing the software that runs on it. Users can run these virtual machines in the Azure Infrastructure Services public cloud, but businesses that use a Hybrid IT model, which combines cloud and on-premise computing, can also connect the virtual machines to their on-premises network. They are more productive and easier to work with. I mean, when you can tailor a machine to your specific requirements rather than switching to a new machine to work on a different operating system or a different set of apps/software.

Azure Virtual Machine Highlights and Proficiencies

Virtual machines are self-contained and extremely portable. And are easy to customize and they allow you to work on a system of your choice on the same hardware. Virtual machines offer numerous advantages due to their flexibility and portability. They are:

• Scalability — VMs enable you to scale your apps more easily by adding more physical or virtual servers to distribute the workload across multiple VMs. As a result, you can improve your apps' availability and performance.

• Agility — The ability to manipulate servers as if they were data demonstrates the power of virtualization technology. In a matter of minutes, users can convert what was previously primarily a physical resource into the software. Azure agility help modernize your infrastructure, elevating process-centered operations to an agile, customer-focused organization.

• Reduced downtime — VMs are so portable and easy to move from one hypervisor to another on a different machine, they are an excellent backup solution in the event that the host goes down unexpectedly.

• Backup and Recovery — Azure is well-known for its quick recovery and backup solutions, which were previously unavailable with physical machines. You no longer have to be concerned about your hardware failing. All of your data and apps are stored in Azure storage, and if hardware fails, they are quickly shifted to other hardware areas to avoid service downtime.

How can Azure Virtual Machine assist us?

With Azure, you can build complex virtual networks that span the globe, store data anywhere, and take advantage of Azure's innovative, world-class cloud services and global footprint. When we combine virtualization's power with Microsoft Azure's reach and scope, the business benefits of both are amplified, providing us with speed, agility, performance, global presence, security, and disaster recovery at scale.

• Enhanced Performance: We can scale services and applications quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively because we can clone and spin up multiple instances of the same virtual machine.

  Scalability is available, but it is an expensive option in the physical. The cost is reduced in a virtual world. If your hosting platform has enough resources, adding another instance is as simple as a few mouse clicks. Because of the size of Azure's global data center footprint, hosting your services on Microsoft Azure provides you with virtually unlimited hardware resources

• Cloning: Cloning a machine physically is an expensive and time-consuming task, but cloning an Azure VM takes seconds and only a few clicks. Because you can save your customized VM as a template, you can simply clone it again and again.

• Business continuity and disaster recovery: True business continuity and resilient offsite disaster recovery are now available to any organization, thanks to Microsoft Azure. Setting up your redundant infrastructure on Azure allows you to create a full disaster recovery site for a fraction of the cost. When compared to traditional DR solutions, your redundant virtual machines are only started when needed, and because you are not billed when the machines are not in use, the result is significant cost savings. When disaster strikes, you simply spin up the environment, and because it is cloud-based, you can access it from anywhere.

How does the VM competition stack up?

There is significant competition in the field of Virtual Machines as well; large cloud providers have Virtual Machines integrated into their cloud.

AWS hosts virtual machines, also known as instances. An Amazon Machine Image (AMI) is a master image that is used to create virtual servers in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment (known as EC2 instances). The Amazon Machine Image (AMI) contains the instructions for launching an instance, which is a cloud-based virtual server. These machine images, like templates, are pre-configured with an operating system and other software, determining the user's operating environment. Each AMI then includes a template for the root volume required for a particular type of instance.

Google Cloud has its own Compute Engine which allows users to create virtual machines on Google's infrastructure. To meet your needs, you can create a Virtual Machine (VM). Predefined machine types are Virtual Machine configurations that have been pre-built and are ready to use, with specific amounts of vCPU and memory for quickly running apps. Autoscaling is a feature of Compute Engine that allows it to automatically add or remove Virtual Machine instances from a managed instance group based on changes in load. When the need for resources is low, autoscaling allows your apps to handle increases in traffic gracefully while also lowering costs.

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Thanks for reading it 😀

Thank you to the Azure Community for organizing AZ-104 sessions so that we could better understand and learn about Virtual Machines.

Here is the link to register for this bootcamp: azdev.reskilll.com/event/Az104~doon

Visit docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-mach.. to learn more about Azure and its Virtual Machines.*