Minimum required Elements for Microsoft Azure VMs

Being surprised about then number of elements after creating a virtual machine which supports backup, failover, and antimalware protection (in total five resource groups and twenty-four resources, six of them hidden, see “Resources found after Creation of a Virtual Machine in Microsoft Azure“), I created my own list of minimum required elements for an Azure VM.

Note: This post is part of a series of postings describing several aspects I found noticeable or good to know when I recently created a virtual machine in Microsoft Azure. “Notes and Observations when setting up a Virtual Machine in Microsoft Azure” gives an overview of all parts of the series.

Minimum required Elements

Theses are the elements I identfied as the minimum when creating a virtual machine in Azure, without backup or replication. This list is based on Microsoft’s tutorial “Compile a checklist for creating an Azure Virtual Machine“.

  • Resouce group to collect all required resources
  • The VM itself
  • Its OS disk
  • Storage account for the disk(s), only if boot or OS guest diagnostics is enabled
  • Virtual network (probably shared with other VMs and services) having at minimum one subnet
  • Network interface to communicate over the network
  • Network Security Group(s) to secure the network traffic
  • Optional: Public Internet address, in case remote access to the VM is required

Links

Notes and Observations when setting up a Virtual Machine in Microsoft Azure
Resources found after Creation of a Virtual Machine in Microsoft Azure
Microsoft’s tutorial “Compile a checklist for creating an Azure Virtual Machine