My first experience with a computer was in the rad 90s. They were new and exciting! When the internet came around, it opened a whole new door of possibilities and learning; it truly was a great time to be alive!
At the forefront of the computer movement stood one giant entity — Microsoft. Yes, unless you were a deep geek, you gamed on Windows 98 and surfed the web on Windows XP, all on a gigantic Gateway equipped with a cow hide mouse pad. There was probably Mountain Dew and Dorito wrappers on the desk, but I digress…
As an adult with some gray stubble in my beard, I now work as a…..Linux Engineer! Hey, Linux is everywhere. Linux is the OS of choice for enterprise servers, but when I see the Window panes and rolling green hills, it brings back pangs of nostalgia, and I long to understand what made Windows great enough to help me write my term papers in college, give me opportunities for work, run Doom for hours at night, and download songs from LimeWire!
I am on a mission to learn the skills of a Windows Admin to add to my growing skillset. In particular, I am learning MS Azure while learning the skills of a Windows Admin. So far, I have self-taught many basic of ADDS, Domain Controllers, DNS and DHCP. Now I want to create labs in an Azure environment. So this article is me launching a Windows Server (2019) in the cloud through Azure. Let’s go…
Prereqs:
- Free Azure account
- A computer :)
- Willingness to learn and can follow simple instructions
Procedure
Open Azure Portal. Under services, choose “Virtual Machines”. Click on “Create” on the next screen and choose Azure virtual machine.
You will be brought to the next screen, Create a virtual machine, where you can give the vm a memorable name, choose a region (probably keep the default), and choose Image.
Name your VM and choose Windows Server 2022 Datacenter Azure Edition. Keep all the other defaults and click create!
Soon, you will be brought to the administrator account credential creation screen. Grab a username and create a password you wont forget…I do believe you need at least 12 characters.
Leave the inbound port as RDP 3389 (RDP is like the Windows equivalent of SSH).
Click “Review and Create”.
Your machine will spend a minute or so validating. Then you will see a validation passed screen.
If it all looks good, click “Create” and your VM will deploy.
Finally, “Go to resource” and you can see all the details of your VM. To access this machine you will click connect in the upper left corner next to start and choose RDP on the next screen, but this is getting too long! Enjoy!
Ok, that is enough nostalgia for the day. Still can’t play Doom on this thing, but I can get on some spacejam.com or get on altavista! Thanks for reading! Go deploy some machines to get experience navigating this beast and DO NOT FORGET TO DELETE AFTERWARDS OR YOU WILL OWE MS YOUR FIRSTBORN!