Create a Windows VM in Azure

Prerequisites

• An Azure account — sign up free here
• Access to the Azure Portal at portal.azure.com
• A Resource Group to deploy into (create one first if needed)

Create VM via Azure Portal

Navigate to the Azure Portal and follow these steps:

1. In the search bar, type Virtual Machines and click it
2. Click + Create → Azure virtual machine
3. The "Create a virtual machine" wizard opens with multiple tabs

Basics Tab — Explained

The Basics tab is where you configure the core identity and compute settings of your VM.

Subscription & Resource Group

Select your subscription and the Resource Group where the VM will live. Create a new Resource Group if needed — name it something like rg-windows-vm-demo.

Virtual Machine Name

Choose a meaningful name. Azure VM names have rules:

• 1–15 characters for Windows VMs
• Letters, numbers, and hyphens only
• Cannot start or end with a hyphen
• Must be unique within the Resource Group

Region

Choose the region closest to your users. For Indian workloads, use Central India (Pune). Remember — not all VM sizes are available in all regions.

Availability Options

This determines your redundancy level:

Security Type

Leave as Trusted launch virtual machines for most workloads. This enables Secure Boot and vTPM for enhanced security.

Image

The operating system image. For Windows, common choices:

• Windows Server 2022 Datacenter — Latest, recommended for new workloads
• Windows Server 2019 Datacenter — Stable, widely used
• Windows 11 Pro — Desktop OS for developer workstations
• Windows 10 Pro — Desktop OS (older)

Size

Click See all sizes to browse all available VM sizes for your region. For this tutorial, use Standard_B2s (2 vCPUs, 4 GB RAM) — cheap and sufficient for learning.

Administrator Account

Create a local administrator account for the VM:

• Username — Cannot be "admin", "administrator", "root", "guest", or "test"
• Password — Minimum 12 characters, must include uppercase, lowercase, number, and special character

Inbound Port Rules

For Windows VMs you need RDP (port 3389) to connect. Select:

• Public inbound ports: Allow selected ports
• Select inbound ports: RDP (3389)

Disks Tab — Explained

OS Disk Type

Choose the storage type for your OS disk:

Delete OS disk when VM is deleted

Check this box! By default, the OS disk is NOT deleted when you delete the VM. Ticking this saves you from orphaned disk charges.

Networking Tab — Explained

Virtual Network

Azure will create a new VNet automatically if you don't have one. For a tutorial VM, the default is fine. Name it something like vnet-demo.

Subnet

A subnet within the VNet. Default subnet (10.0.0.0/24) is fine for this tutorial.

Public IP

Required if you want to connect to the VM from the internet. A new Standard SKU public IP is created automatically. Note: public IPs are billed even when the VM is stopped.

NIC Network Security Group

The firewall for your VM. Select Basic for this tutorial — it will configure RDP access based on your earlier port selection. For production, use Advanced to create custom rules.

Delete NIC when VM is deleted

Check this box — same reason as OS disk. Prevents orphaned NIC charges.

Management Tab — Key Settings

Auto-shutdown

Enable auto-shutdown with a time (e.g., 8 PM daily). This is extremely useful for dev/test VMs — it automatically deallocates the VM every evening, saving cost.

Azure Monitor agent

Install this to collect performance metrics and logs. Recommended for production VMs — leave it enabled.

Review + Create

Click Review + create. Azure validates your configuration — if anything is wrong, it highlights the issue and which tab to fix it on. Once validation passes, you see a summary with the estimated monthly cost. Click Create to deploy.

Deployment typically takes 2–5 minutes. You'll see a notification in the portal when complete.

Create via Azure CLI

The entire VM creation can be done in one CLI command:

# Create resource group first
az group create \
  --name rg-windows-vm-demo \
  --location centralindia

# Create the Windows VM
az vm create \
  --resource-group rg-windows-vm-demo \
  --name vm-windows-demo \
  --image Win2022Datacenter \
  --size Standard_B2s \
  --admin-username azureuser \
  --admin-password "YourSecureP@ssword123!" \
  --location centralindia \
  --public-ip-sku Standard

# Open RDP port 3389
az vm open-port \
  --resource-group rg-windows-vm-demo \
  --name vm-windows-demo \
  --port 3389

az vm show \
  --resource-group rg-windows-vm-demo \
  --name vm-windows-demo \
  --show-details \
  --query publicIps \
  --output tsv

After the VM is Created

Once deployed, connect to your VM via RDP:

1. In the Azure Portal, go to your VM → click Connect → RDP
2. Download the .rdp file
3. Open the .rdp file — Windows Remote Desktop opens
4. Enter your administrator username and password
5. Accept the certificate warning and connect

You're now inside a Windows Server running in Azure's data centre in Pune!

Cleaning Up

To avoid ongoing charges, clean up when done:

az group delete \
  --name rg-windows-vm-demo \
  --yes \
  --no-wait