Azure beginners guide! (free cloud services)

Hey guys, in this video, I'll be giving a brief introduction to Microsoft Azure and all the amazing free services they provide. I'll also be sharing my personal experience with using Azure in a professional setting and how it has helped me in my projects. Plus, I'll be showing you how to get started on Azure, including signing up, exploring the dashboard, and creating your first resources. And don't forget to stick around for the end, where I'll be discussing pricing options and managing resources with Azure CLI. So if you're interested in learning more about Microsoft Azure, stay tuned and let's get started!

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Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
00:34 Why do I use Microsoft Azure?
02:23 How to get started
04:03 What's included in the free plans?
06:11 Additional Learning Material
06:57 Cost Management in Azure
08:58 Create Resource Groups
12:26 Create SSH Keys
13:42 Create Virtual Networks
15:51 Create Virtual Machines (part 1)
20:36 Pricing and Sizing Options
23:49 Create Virtual Machines (part 2)
29:57 Azure CLI
33:19 Conclusion and future Projects

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[sMadaras]

The best introductory video to Azure I’ve ever seen.

[TheEnd]

Can you please make a video on the Azure Always Free services and how you can use it for your home lab?

[marcwesterink]

Nice introduction. I couldn't have explained it any better for anyone who is getting started with Azure for the first time as ITPros (devs have a different path). I am working with Microsoft Azure since 2014. It's good to be reminded again that some free services exist, so I feel a bit stupid. Nevertheless, here are a few suggestions as a learning path. First Azure Fundamentals (skip this if you're a technical person), then Azure Administrator, then Azure Solutions Architect Expert. Then you can choose various specialties like Azure DevOps, Azure Networking and Azure Security Technologies that would be most interesting for Christian himself. Hope this helps!

[alanjrobertson]

Fantastic introductory video, Christian - more content on this please! Load balancer would be great, also interested in understanding their setup with Bastion for secure access.

[ironsharpensiron]

Fantastic video there! Azure is almost always associated with enterprise-level work - either by extending one's on-premises environment to the cloud, or fork-lifting current workloads to the cloud. Clients are always wanting the biggest E/F/H/N-series VMs, storage accounts, and premium SKUs for all resources. You are one of the few people who even talk about Spot VMs, affordable Azure Marketplace offerings, or that Standard HDDs are viable options!

During working hours, I have to get enterprise infrastructure up and running for customers. But after hours, I find it fun to work on my home lab with older components, limited network bandwidth and a much smaller budget. What you're covering brings back the 'fun' in 'fun-damentals of Azure'. It'd be great if you could continue this as a series where you integrate all the homelab features and have them hosted/integrated in Azure in an affordable way.

[maxnatamo]

I'd love to see some more from Azure, since we just started trying it out. Maybe even some of the software-development-focused services, such as containers, test plans, etc.

[peterholthoffman]

This was a good video and I learned a lot, very quickly! I had been a bit leery of trying Azure but I'm definitely going to give it a go now!

My specific interest is going to be in creating something that will let a user at home query a SQL database hosted on Azure. I have to figure out — do I need an instance of Windows Server running first? Do I add SQL Server to that instance? How do I set up a remote desktop for the user? Those are some of the questions I will be investigating and they might make a good video topic for you.

[SivadasKRamdas]

Misleading besides that 200 USD, nothing is free.

[marsim]

you forgot to mention that the required credit card cannot be a prepaid one so the card is not only for identification !!! You have to constantly check if one or more free of charge services have changed the price from free to something.

[dushkodavchev]

I have been actively using Azure for the last few years and I can say that they have good services. Although this is a video for total beginners, thank you.
I hope you will have a project where you will connect multiple combinations of free services.

[vipast]

Good timing, just started my Cloud Admin job - mainly with AWS, but they also use Azure.

[JohnAngelmo]

Azure virtual machines are billed per minute and not per hour, from their FAQ: We charge for the number of whole minutes your virtual machine is running, so you are not billed for any extra seconds. In this example, you would be billed for 6 minutes.

[docmalitt]

Hi, excellent video (as always) and I might say Microsoft, for whatever reason they don't - I don't care. But free courses, free resources, free playgrounds and practice means more users playing for free... but... more user start getting used to Azure services (probably putting it into their CV) and I think we cannot even imagine if their global percentage in cloud computing grows just 1%. It must be billions of money. However, I look at it as a win-win at least for now.
So yes, please continue because there's a developers option that is always free and I'm sure some intelligent people (like you) will be able to find something cool to incorporate into out homelab on everyday basis. Cheers Christian and enjoy the holidays, you have definitely deserved all the good luck there is in this f-d up world. ho-ho-ho

[BenReese]

That was a lot!! lol. Thank you for taking the time to do it though! I wasn't aware of the Azure Spot option, which looks great for home-lab testing.
Is Spot an option from the CLI and/or Terraform? Would be interesting to simplify a test environment setup using TFE.

Also, PowerShell is an easier way to interact on the CLI in my opinion. We can string together commands, like to start all demo VMs:
Get-AzVM *demo* | Start-AzVM

And maybe this is possible with the AZ CLI also, I haven't tried. I look forward to this series though!

[Excited-IT-Architect]

Christan, thank you very much for your ideas in this video. Please also create a video of how to connect the homelab to the new Azure hosted machines - maybe as another point in the upcoming 2nd video. Thanks! 😀

[mathesonstep]

I had no idea about spot pricing, that's awesome, came here from YT shorts

[Shocker]

I'd like to see a generic load balancing video.
As a home lab person, i don't see a purpose for Azure. I can it's use cases for business use though.

[binarytech]

I would like to see a video about EntraID and how you connect your home lab with it.

[JeanFrancoCaringi]

great video!
please, make another one about the load balancer

[qxwfsoi]

Hey Christian, Love your channel! Question for you and anyone that may be able to help.

So, out of curiosity, say I wanted to start a small IT/Managed services business, how difficult a/o expensive would it be for a small statup with say 5-10 clients. The idea is do everything offsite and from home and still be able to rdp, manage users, etc?

I looked into some of the costs as far as Azure services, but would I need overhead or is there another option to get started managing my own small IT business from home?

If you could do a video on this it would be a huge help, as among the other content I find yours to very helpful.

Thanks.