Dr. Hidaia Mahmood Alassouli - Creating and Managing Virtual Machines and Networks Through Microsoft Azure Services for Remote Access Connection

By

Dr. Hidaia Mahmood Alassouli

Hidaia_alassouli@hotmail.com

While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

Creating and Managing Virtual Machines and Networks Through Microsoft Azure Services for Remote Access Connection

Copyright © 2020 Dr. Hidaia Mahmood Alassouli.

Written by Dr. Hidaia Mahmood Alassouli.

Microsoft Azure, commonly referred to as Azureis a cloud computing service created by Microsoft for building, testing, deploying, and managing applications and services through Microsoft-managed data centers. It provides software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and supports many different programming languages, tools, and frameworks, including both Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems.

The major benefit of a remote desktop connection is being able to connect to your data from anywhere in the world. Your data is in one place that is easy to see and you no longer have to have software installed on your own computer.

Azure is one of the best virtual computers and networks providers for remote desktop (RDP) connections.

When you create Azure account, you pay as you go. You purchase Azure services with pay-as-you-go pricing. You pay only for what you use each month, with no upfront commitment, and cancel anytime. You must add your credit/debit card for billing to use pay as you go subscription.

But I was looking for totally free subscription where I don’t need to add my credit card for billing. I found there are two possible options for that:

1) A sandbox gives you access to Azure resources. Your Azure subscription will not be charged. The sandbox may only be used to complete training on Microsoft Learn. Creating the Azure Virtual machines using sandbox which is learning subscription, you can connect to the VM via RDP port but you cannot access to Internet through the Internet Explorer.

2) Alternatively Microsoft Azure provides a free $100 credit for students accounts registered through university emails (free student subscription for around one year). There is internet access in the VM machine under this type of subscription.

Azure documentations is too deep and it is hard to be understand creating and managing virtual computers and networks in Auzre for remote access connection by any beginner. So, I tried to outline in this report the most important topics as reference guide to assist the user to create and manage virtual computers and networks in Azure for remote access connection in simplified and clear way. This report will include the following parts:

1 Getting free Azure subscription through Sandbox Microsoft Learn subscription (No credit card needed)

2 Free 12 months, then pay-as-you-go Azure account subscription (Credit card needed)

3 Student subscription (No debit/credit cards needed)

4 How to get university email

5 Virtual networks and virtual machines in Azure

6 Quick start for PowerShell in Azure Cloud Shell

7 Quick start with Azure PowerShell

8 Installing Azure CLI on Windows and creating virtual machine

9 Creating a Windows virtual machine in Azure

10 Quick start to create a Linux virtual machine in the Azure portal

11 Tutorial to create a NAT Gateway using the Azure portal and test the NAT service

12 What is Azure Network Watcher?

13 Network Watcher Agent

14 Troubleshoot connections with Azure Network Watcher using the Azure portal

15 Troubleshoot Azure VM connectivity problems

16 Quick start to configure Load Balancer

17 Quick start to configure VPN Gateway using Azure portal

18 Tutorial to connect to a virtual machine using Azure Bastion

19 Exercise to create Window Virtual Machine

20 Exercise to create Ubuntu Virtual Machine

A sandbox gives you access to Azure resources. Your Azure subscription will not be charged. The sandbox may only be used to complete training on Microsoft Learn. Use for any other reason is prohibited, and may result in permanent loss of access to the sandbox. The sandbox may only be used to complete training on Microsoft Learn.

You can obtain Sandbox free subscription for duration of 1or 2 hrs. each time through some exercises in Microsoft learn, as an example these exercises

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/deploy-vms-from-vhd-templates/4-exercise-create-image-provision-vm?pivots=windows-cloud

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/create-windows-virtual-machine-in-azure/3-exercise-create-a-vm

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/create-linux-virtual-machine-in-azure/

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/improve-app-scalability-resiliency-with-load-balancer/

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/connect-on-premises-network-with-vpn-gateway/3-exercise-prepare-azure-and-on-premises-vnets-using-azure-cli-commands.

Creating the Azure Windows Virtual machine using sandbox which is learning subscription. You can connect to the VM via RDP port but you cannot access to Internet through the Internet Explorer.

Outbound data transfer is charged at the normal rate and inbound data transfer is free. Refer to these articles for more information:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/support/faq?pivots=sandbox

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/bandwidth/

You can create your Azure free account. Get started with 12 months of free services. With your Azure free account, you get all of this—and you won’t be charged until you choose to upgrade.

12 months of popular free services + $200 credit to explore Azure for 30 days.

After the free 12 months period, you purchase Azure services with pay-as-you-go pricing. The debit/credit card details must be provided during registration for billing of non-free services.

What you can do with free account? Here are just a few ideas of all you can do with Azure

Create personalized experiences with AI: Build connected, cross-platform experiences—tailored to customer interactions using AI and machine learning.

Drive innovation for existing and future apps: Modernize applications. Deploy Windows and Linux virtual machines across cloud and hybrid environments.

Build scalable apps and release features faster: Create workloads that scale up and down based on demand. Plus, deliver software more rapidly and reliably with end-to-end DevOps solutions.

You can see the pay as you go pricing calculator from this website

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/