Virtual machines offer flexibility and isolation, making them a great tool for various use cases.

This time, we will be deploying a Windows-based VM—precisely, Windows 11.

With this Windows 11 VM, users can:

• run Windows operating systems on a non-Windows host computer (e.g., macOS, Linux) and access Windows-exclusive features or tools for work or personal projects.
• run legacy Windows applications or games that aren't compatible with older OS versions.
• test Windows software or applications without affecting your main machine.

PREREQUISITE

• Working computer
• Internet connection
• Microsoft Azure account + subscription

PROCEDURE

SIGN IN

After signing in to Azure, you’re presented with a dashboard that looks somewhat like this.

LOCATE THE VIRTUAL MACHINE SERVICE

There are several ways to access the Virtual machine service.

• Locate it under recent Azure services as displayed on the dashboard.

• Click on the menu icon (3 dashes at the top left corner). A pop-up window appears and locate Virtual machines under the “Favorites” tab or the “All services” tab.

• Search directly for the resource you would like to locate in the search bar at the top of the screen.

Whatever route chosen leads to the same destination that looks like this.

Click on the “Create” button and then click on “Azure virtual machine” on the pop-up menu.
You will be directed to the “Basics” page.

SPECIFYING VM DETAILS AND REQUIREMENTS

The first part of the “Basics” page is the “Project details” section where you are asked to select the subscription and resource group under which you want to create the VM. Don’t forget the straightforward parent-child hierarchy in Azure—Resources are stored in Resource Groups, which are then stored under Subscriptions.

PS: In case you haven’t created one previously, creating a resource group just requires you to provide a name in the input box provided after clicking on “Create new” beneath the “Resource group” input box as shown.

The next section is “Instance details” where you can input a VM name of choice, select a region and availability zones as required.

Under “Images”, we get to specify the particular operating system that we want to use for our VM from the provided list. For this, we need a Windows 11 VM. Therefore, select “Windows 11 Pro, version 22H2 - ×64”.

Select the size of your virtual machine from the drop-down list or click on "See all sizes" to see other specifications that may suit your requirements.

Scrolling down, we get to “Administrator account” section where you are required to provide a username and password.
This will be used to log in to the account so, keep a record or use a password you won’t forget.

At the “Inbound port rules” section, select “RDP (3389)” from the drop-down list provided when you click on the box for “Select inbound ports”.
Further down, tick the check box under “Licensing”.

Since this is just a trial, we would be leaving most of the settings as default and skip to only those that need to be attended to personally.
Scroll back to the top and click on “Monitoring”.

The webpage below loads.

Disable boot diagnostics.
Next, click on Tags.
Tags provide metadata or additional information that helps in managing, organizing, and tracking resources within a cloud infrastructure.
Decide tag descriptions and values as shown.
When you’re satisfied, click on the “Review + create” button.

If you get a ribbon depicting validation failure, don’t panic yet. Find the section that has the issue as notified. In this case, “Basics”. Find the error and correct it following the prompts.

Afterwards, click on the “Review + create” button again. A page as shown should appear showing the pricing for the VM size selected and the details of the VM.

Click on the “Create” button. There will be a pop-up at the top right showing the status of the deployment.

You will be directed to a “CreateVm” page which goes through several phases that you might need to be patient for.

Click on “Go to resource”.

CONNECT TO THE VM RESOURCE

On the resource page, click on “Connect”.

After the Connect page loads, click on “Select” as shown.

You should notice a pop-up on the right hand side of the screen.

Wait for the box beneath “Public IP address XXX.XX.XXX.XXX” to transition from “Validating” to “Configured”. Then download the RDP file-this will be used to load the Windows VM.

Load the downloaded file and click on “Connect” on the window that pops up.

Input your username and password in the next window and affirm.

Voilà! You should have a Windows 11 VM running on your computer right about now.

Log in as you will on a physical computer and that’s it.

Now, you are connected to your Windows 11 Pro regardless of which OS currently runs on your computer.