Create virtual machines with the Azure PowerShell

In this tutorial, you learn all of the steps involved in setting up a virtual machine with Azure PowerShell. The tutorial also covers output queries, Azure resource reuse, and resource cleanup.

This tutorial can be completed with the interactive experience offered through Azure Cloud Shell, or you may install Azure PowerShell locally.

Use ctrl-shift-v (cmd-shift-v on macOS) to paste tutorial text into Azure Cloud Shell.

Sign in

• 21 minutes remaining

If you're using a local install of the Azure PowerShell, you need to sign in before performing any other steps.

Connect-AzAccount

Complete the sign in process by following the steps displayed in your terminal.

Create a resource group

• 20 minutes remaining

In Azure, all resources are allocated in a resource management group. Resource groups provide logical groupings of resources that make them easier to work with as a collection. For this tutorial, all of the created resources go into a single group named TutorialResources.

New-AzResourceGroup -Name TutorialResources -Location eastus

ResourceGroupName : TutorialResources
Location          : eastus
ProvisioningState : Succeeded
Tags              :
ResourceId        : /subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/resourceGroups/TutorialResources

Create admin credentials for the VM

• 19 minutes remaining

Before you can create a new virtual machine, you must create a credential object containing the username and password for the administrator account of the Windows VM.

$cred = Get-Credential -Message "Enter a username and password for the virtual machine."

Enter the username and password when prompted. The resulting credential object is passed as a parameter in the next step.

Windows PowerShell credential request.
Enter a username and password for the virtual machine.
User: tutorAdmin
Password for user tutorAdmin: *********

Create a virtual machine

• 18 minutes remaining

Virtual machines in Azure have a large number of dependencies. The Azure PowerShell creates these resources for you based on the command-line arguments you specify. For readability, we are using PowerShell splatting to pass parameters to the Azure PowerShell cmdlets.

Create a new virtual machine running Windows.

$vmParams = @{
  ResourceGroupName = 'TutorialResources'
  Name = 'TutorialVM1'
  Location = 'eastus'
  ImageName = 'Win2016Datacenter'
  PublicIpAddressName = 'tutorialPublicIp'
  Credential = $cred
  OpenPorts = 3389
  Size = 'Standard_D2s_v3'
}
$newVM1 = New-AzVM @vmParams

As the VM is created, you see the parameter values used and Azure resources being created. PowerShell will display a progress bar as shown below.

 Creating Azure resources
  39% \
  [ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo                                                                 ]

  Creating TutorialVM1 virtual machine.

Once the VM is ready, we can view the results in the Azure Portal or by inspecting the $newVM1 variable.

$newVM1

ResourceGroupName : TutorialResources
Id                : /subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/resourceGroups/TutorialResources/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/TutorialVM1
VmId              : 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Name              : TutorialVM1
Type              : Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines
Location          : eastus
Tags              : {}
HardwareProfile   : {VmSize}
NetworkProfile    : {NetworkInterfaces}
OSProfile         : {ComputerName, AdminUsername, WindowsConfiguration, Secrets}
ProvisioningState : Succeeded
StorageProfile    : {ImageReference, OsDisk, DataDisks}

Property values listed inside of braces are nested objects. In the next step we will show you how to view specific values in these nested objects.

Get VM information with queries

• 14 minutes remaining

Let's get some more detailed information from the VM we just created. In this example, we verify the Name of the VM and the admin account we created.

$newVM1.OSProfile | Select-Object -Property ComputerName, AdminUserName

ComputerName AdminUsername
------------ -------------
TutorialVM1  tutorialAdmin

We can use other Azure PowerShell commands to get specific information about the network configuration.

$newVM1 | Get-AzNetworkInterface |
  Select-Object -ExpandProperty IpConfigurations |
    Select-Object -Property Name, PrivateIpAddress

In this example we are using the PowerShell pipeline to send the $newVM1 object to the Get-AzNetworkInterface cmdlet. From the resulting network interface object we are selecting the nested IpConfigurations object. From the IpConfigurations object we are selecting the Name and PrivateIpAddress properties.

Name        PrivateIpAddress
----        ----------------
TutorialVM1 192.168.1.4

To confirm that the VM is running, we need to connect via Remote Desktop. For that, we need to know the Public IP address.

$publicIp = Get-AzPublicIpAddress -Name tutorialPublicIp -ResourceGroupName TutorialResources

$publicIp |
  Select-Object -Property Name, IpAddress, @{label='FQDN';expression={$_.DnsSettings.Fqdn}}

In this example, we use the Get-AzPublicIpAddress and store the results in the $publicIp variable. From this variable we are selecting properties and using an expression to retrieve the nested Fqdn property.

Name             IpAddress           FQDN
----             ---------           ----
tutorialPublicIp <PUBLIC_IP_ADDRESS> tutorialvm1-8a0999.eastus.cloudapp.azure.com

From your local machine you can run the following command to connect to the VM over Remote Desktop.

mstsc.exe /v $publicIp.IpAddress

For more information about querying for object properties, see Querying for Azure resources.

Creating a new VM on the existing subnet

• 9 minutes remaining

The second VM uses the existing subnet.

$vm2Params = @{
  ResourceGroupName = 'TutorialResources'
  Name = 'TutorialVM2'
  ImageName = 'Win2016Datacenter'
  VirtualNetworkName = 'TutorialVM1'
  SubnetName = 'TutorialVM1'
  PublicIpAddressName = 'tutorialPublicIp2'
  Credential = $cred
  OpenPorts = 3389
}
$newVM2 = New-AzVM @vm2Params

$newVM2

ResourceGroupName        : TutorialResources
Id                       : /subscriptions/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/resourceGroups/TutorialResources/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/TutorialVM2
VmId                     : 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000
Name                     : TutorialVM2
Type                     : Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines
Location                 : eastus
Tags                     : {}
HardwareProfile          : {VmSize}
NetworkProfile           : {NetworkInterfaces}
OSProfile                : {ComputerName, AdminUsername, WindowsConfiguration, Secrets}
ProvisioningState        : Succeeded
StorageProfile           : {ImageReference, OsDisk, DataDisks}
FullyQualifiedDomainName : tutorialvm2-dfa5af.eastus.cloudapp.azure.com

You can skip a few steps to get the public IP address of the new VM since it's returned in the FullyQualifiedDomainName property of the $newVM2 object. Use the following command to connect using Remote Desktop.

mstsc.exe /v $newVM2.FullyQualifiedDomainName

Cleanup

• 5 minutes remaining

Now that the tutorial is complete, it's time to clean up the created resources. You can delete individual resources with the Remove-AzResource command, but the safest way to remove all resources in a resource group is delete the group using the Remove-AzResourceGroup command.

$job = Remove-AzResourceGroup -Name TutorialResources -Force -AsJob

$job

Id     Name            PSJobTypeName   State         HasMoreData     Location             Command
--     ----            -------------   -----         -----------     --------             -------
1      Long Running... AzureLongRun... Running       True            localhost            Remove-AzResource...

This command deletes the resources created during the tutorial, and is guaranteed to deallocate them in the correct order. The AsJob parameter keeps PowerShell from blocking while the deletion takes place. To wait until the deletion is complete, use the following command:

Wait-Job -Id $job.Id

With cleanup completed, the tutorial is finished. Continue on for a summary of everything you learned and links to resources that will help you with your next steps.

Summary

• 100% complete!

Congratulations! You learned how to create VMs with new or existing resources, used expressions and other Azure PowerShell commands to capture data to be stored in shell variables, and looked at some of the resources that get created for Azure VMs.

Where you go from here depends on how you plan to use Azure PowerShell. There are a variety of materials that go further in depth on the features covered in this tutorial.

In-depth Azure PowerShell documentation

You might want to take time to explore the complete Azure PowerShell documentation set.

For more information about the commands used in this tutorial, see the following articles.

• New-AzResourceGroup
• Get-Credential
• New-AzVM
• Select-Object
• Get-AzPublicIpAddress
• Remove-AzResourceGroup
• Wait-Job

There are also articles that go deeper into the features that were shown in the tutorial.

• PowerShell splatting
• Queries
• Formatting
• Using PowerShell jobs

Sample scripts

If you want to get started right away with specific tasks, look at some sample scripts.

• Azure App Service
• SQL Databases
• Cosmos DB
• Samples repo

Feedback

If you'd like to give feedback, suggestions, or ask questions, there are a number of ways for you to get in touch.

• Send-Feedback is a built-in command for Azure PowerShell that allows you to provide free-form feedback to the team.
• File a feature request or a bug report in the Azure PowerShell repository.
• Ask a question or get clarification by filing an issue in the Azure PowerShell documentation repository.

We hope that you enjoy using Azure PowerShell!