Simple steps on how to create a Windows 11 Virtual machine that is highly available, with a free tier azure account.
Published: 2024-07-09 11:36:52

In this short post I will explore creation of a highly available windows 11 virtual machine. Below are the steps to creating a windows 11 virtual machine. High availability refers to the ability of a system or application to remain operational and accessible even in the face of disruptions or failures. This is achieved through a combination of redundancy, failover mechanisms, and automatic recovery processes. Any or a combination of the following components will ensure high availability of azure cloud resources, to mention a few.
-Availability Sets
-Load Balancing
-Virtual Machine Scale Sets
-Backup and Restore
I will discuss these concepts in a different post

PART A
- STEP 1. This is involves creating a free tier account on azure portal (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/free) The free tier azure account comes with a $200 subscription credit from azure.

- STEP 2. Create Virtual machine. Search for the resources to be created (Virtual machine) from the search box on azure portal. Another way to get to the resources is by clicking all service.

- STEP 3. Select the correct subscription (free tier in this article), An Azure subscription is a logical container used to provision related business or technical resources in Azure. Choose an existing resource group or create a new one. A resource group is a container that holds related resources for an Azure solution. Add a create a name for the virtual machine. Select the number of availability zones desired. You can select up to 3 availability zones, this process will create multiple virtual machines.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/7d39a5hndboh2ojoq1xj.png)

- STEP 4. Input all other necessary details require on the basic tab. The image for this write is Windows 11, memory size is the free tier. Complete the Administrator account section. Select SSH public key for the authentication type. Create a username for the virtual machine. For the public inbound ports select Allow selected port. Select RDP and  for inbound ports.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/wdeyf32e69vrsaeeobpq.png)

- STEP 5. Click next button to disks, Networking, Management, Monitoring, Advanced, Tags review as desired and add resources if so desired. click Review + create, once validation passed click create.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/pys30d9am4ol4gxcf65z.png)

- STEP 6. The progress for creation of the virtual machine in 2 availability zones is shown below.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ptsu4fwoipphuvzyxf3u.png)

- STEP 7.The newly created virtual machine will appear just like so. Click go to resource to access the virtual machine.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/9t1ynsub3m9e5s32maun.png)

- STEP 8. Click connect button and click connect from the drop down. I will be using RDP to connect to the virtual machine on my local machine. Click download RDP after the native RDP is configured. Enter admin name and password to connect.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/zvcnb9ooqlbq447kbtda.png)

- STEP 9. Below is the virtual machine.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ni56p7u6pamlxlj87vjv.png)

- STEP 10. After connecting to the virtual on the local machine. We have to stop/delete the virtual machine depending on the purpose of usage and other factors. Stopping virtual machine will deallocate the resource.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/whb6154a4hf8kgvtez6w.png)


In this write up I used just one component to make my resource highly available which is creating my virtual machine in 2 separate availability zones. I will be discussing the components of high availability in another post.

Lastly, always remember to delete resources you are not currently using.

This is not an exhaustive step to creating a high availability resource i.e virtual machine using to RDP connect.

Thank you.