Compiling a checklist for creating an Azure Virtual Machine - source MS

Compiling a checklist for creating an Azure Virtual Machine

• Start with the network
• Name the VM
• Decide the location for the VM
• Determine the size of the VM
• Understanding the pricing model
• Storage for the VM
• Select an operating system

Azure reserves the first four addresses and the last address in each subnet for its use.

take an inventory:

• What does the server communicate with?
• Which ports are open?
• Which OS is used?
• How much disk space is in use?
• What kind of data does this use? Are there restrictions (legal or otherwise) with not having it on-premises?
• What sort of CPU, memory, and disk I/O load does the server have? Is there burst traffic to account for?

You can specify a name of up to 15 characters on a Windows VM and 64 characters on a Linux VM.

This name also defines a manageable Azure resource, and it's not trivial to change later.

 A good convention is to include the following information in the name:

Element	Example	Notes
Environment	dev, prod, QA	Identifies the environment for the resource
Location	uw (US West), ue (US East)	Identifies the region into which the resource is deployed
Instance	01, 02	For resources that have more than one named instance (web servers, etc.)
Product or Service	service	Identifies the product, application, or service that the resource supports
Role	sql, web, messaging	Identifies the role of the associated resource An Azure resource is a manageable item in Azure The VM itself Storage account for the disks Virtual network (shared with other VMs and services) Network interface to communicate on the network Network Security Group(s) to secure the network traffic Public Internet address (optional) If Azure creates the resource, it will use the VM name to generate a resource name - another reason to be very consistent with your VM names! Option Description General purpose General-purpose VMs are designed to have a balanced CPU-to-memory ratio. Ideal for testing and development, small to medium databases, and low to medium traffic web servers. Compute optimized Compute optimized VMs are designed to have a high CPU-to-memory ratio. Suitable for medium traffic web servers, network appliances, batch processes, and application servers. Memory optimized Memory optimized VMs are designed to have a high memory-to-CPU ratio. Great for relational database servers, medium to large caches, and in-memory analytics. Storage optimized Storage optimized VMs are designed to have high disk throughput and IO. Ideal for VMs running databases. GPU GPU VMs are specialized virtual machines targeted for heavy graphics rendering and video editing. These VMs are ideal options for model training and inferencing with deep learning. High performance computes High performance compute is the fastest and most powerful CPU virtual machines with optional high-throughput network interfaces. There are two separate costs the subscription will be charged for every VM: compute and storage. By separating these costs, you scale them independently and only pay for what you need. pay-as-you-go Reserved Virtual Machine Instances - pay in advance Virtual disks can be backed by either Standard or Premium Storage accounts When you create disks, unmanaged disks or managed disks Azure only supports 64-bit operating systems