Ever wanted to launch your own virtual machine (VM) in the cloud and save it as a reusable image? In this blog, I’ll walk you through the beginner-friendly steps I took to create a Windows VM on Azure and capture it into an image using Azure Compute Gallery.
You don’t need any coding. All you need is curiosity and a browser.
☁️ Step 1: Deploy a Simple Windows VM (Using a Quickstart Template)
Let’s kick things off the smart way — by using an Azure Quickstart Template to launch a Windows Virtual Machine in just a few clicks.
💡 Quickstart templates are like ready-made blueprints. You don’t have to write code or manually configure a dozen options — just fill in a few details and hit “Deploy.”
Here’s how I did it:
- Head over to the Azure Quickstart Templates Gallery.
- Search for "Simple Windows VM" and click the template.
- Click the “Deploy to Azure” button — this sends you straight to the Azure Portal with the template pre-loaded.
Now the real magic happens! In the Azure Portal:
- Resource Group: I created a new one with a memorable name to keep things tidy.
-
Virtual Machine Name: I went with
MyWindowsVM. - Region: Chose the closest region to me for better latency.
- Admin Username & Password: Pick something secure — you’ll need these to log in later.
🧠 Why start with a Windows VM? I’m comfortable with the Windows interface and wanted to explore GUI-based server setups before diving into Linux-based configurations.
✅ Pro Tip: Using the Quickstart template not only saved time, but also ensured I was deploying my VM using Microsoft’s best practices. It’s perfect for beginners and pros who don’t want to reinvent the wheel.
⚙️ Step 2: Review and Create
After configuring size, disk, and network settings (defaults are fine for now), hit Review + Create and then Create.
✅ You’ve now got a running Windows VM on Azure!
📸 Step 3: Capture the VM
Once the VM was running, I wanted to reuse its configuration later. So I captured an image of it. But there’s a catch:
❓ Generalized vs Specialized Image
Azure asked: “Do you want a generalized or specialized image?”
🧠 Why I chose Specialized: A specialized image includes everything — user settings, installed software, etc. Perfect for personal or test environments.
🧩 Steps to Capture:
- Stop the VM (Azure won’t let you capture a running one).
- Click on your VM → Capture
- Choose:
- Image Name
- Create a new Compute Gallery
- Choose specialized
- Add version number
- (Optional) Add tags
- Hit Review + Create, then Create
✅ Boom! You’ve now saved your VM as a reusable image in Azure Compute Gallery.
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📁 Step 4: Validate and Organize
Azure will validate your capture and notify you once the image is available in your compute gallery. I recommend tagging your images to stay organized, especially if you plan to build scale sets later.
👀 Reflections
💡 This process was smoother than I expected. Choosing between generalized and specialized images is an important architectural decision depending on your use case. Since I didn’t need a clean template, specialized was just right.
🧠 What You Learned
- How to deploy a Windows VM using Azure Portal
- When to choose specialized vs generalized VM images
- How to stop, capture, and store a VM image in Azure Compute Gallery
In the next post, I’ll show how I used this captured image to create a Virtual Machine Scale Set (VMSS) with autoscaling!
Stay tuned, and let me know in the comments if this helped or confused you — I’m learning too. 🤝
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