Creating an Azure VM that runs Linux is easy to do. We will use ssh public key file to secure our SSH connection to VM. We can also create Linux VM’s using our own images as templates.

NOTE: We will create an Azure VM which is managed by Azure resource group.

Pre-requisite

We need Azure subscription.

Steps

Select image

1)    Log in http://portal.azure.com

2)    On the Hub menu, click New >> Compute >> Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS

3)    At bottom of Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS page, select Resource Manager to create VM in Azure Resource Manager.

4)    Next, click Create

Create VM

1)    On Create virtual machine blade, click Basics. Enter Name and public key file. Create new Resource group. Select Azure datacentre Location.

NOTE: We may also choose username/password authentication here and enter that information if we do not want to secure our ssh session with a public and private key exchange.

2)    Click Size and select appropriate VM size. Each size specifies the number of compute cores, memory and other features, such as support for Premium Storage. Azure recommends certain sizes automatically depending on the image we choose. When done, click Select.

3)    Click Settings for storage and networking settings for VM. When done, click OK.

4)    Click Summary to review configuration choices. When we're done reviewing or updating the settings, click Create.

5)    While Azure creates VM, we can track progress in Notifications, in Hub menu. After Azure creates VM, we'll see it on our Startboard.

Connect to VM

Now we can connect Ubuntu VM using ssh in standard way. However, we're going to discover the IP address allocated to the Azure VM.

Now we can ssh into our Azure VM and we're ready to go.