Azure compute: Virtual Machines
Updated: Jan 18, 2022
One of the essential computing services available in the Azure cloud is creating and managing virtual machines. The concept of using Virtual machines has been available in the industry for more than a decade provided by providers such as VMware and Microsoft (using Hyper-V servers). So, what do virtual machines mean? Well, VM's are software emulations of physical computers, meaning that it's a virtual server running on a physical server which allows creating new servers extremely quick (Virtual servers are based on existing resources of the physical server).
Virtual machines contain the same resources as physical servers, including virtual processors, memory, networking resources., storage, and much more. After deployment of VM, we can easily set the operating system and any other software just like a physical computer. With Azure Virtual Machines, you can create and use VM's in the cloud with almost no effort and with minimum waste of time.
Virtual Machines Architecture:
In the cloud, the physical layer (Hardware + Hypervisor) is related to the Infrastructure as a Services (IaaS) and therefore completely managed by Azure, and we don't have any control or access to these layers (they are hidden from us). We entirely manage the virtual part, and we have complete control and access to it, meaning that we have the responsibility to deploy an operating system, Data, and more.
for more reading on the On-Prem Architecture:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/virtualization/hyper-v/hyper-v-on-windows-server
Examples of when to use VMs:
To run applications in the cloud - Cloud VMS allow organizations to quickly deploy their apps in the public cloud without investing in any ion-prem infrastructure.
During development and testing - Using VM's, development teams can easily create different OS and applications configurations to support their programming and testing efforts.
Lower hardware costs - instead of investing in physical hardware, organizations can now spin up virtual servers.
Lift and Shift - Allow organizations to move their physical server to the cloud by simply creating an image of the physical server and hosting it within a VM with almost no changes.
Here is a link that you can use to create a new VM in the Azure portal: