How to create a Windows 10 Pro Version 22H2-x64 Gen 2 Virtual Machine in Microsoft Azure

What is a Virtual Machine:
A virtual machine (VM) in the Azure portal is a fully configurable, cloud-based computing resource that emulates a physical computer, enabling users to deploy and manage applications with customizable processing power, memory, and storage, all accessible through a secure, browser-based interface designed for efficient workload management and global scalability.

In this article, we will be focusing on:

Prerequisites
Before you begin, make sure you have:

An active Azure account. You can sign up for a free trial if you don’t have one.

Step-by-Step Guide to Create a Virtual Machine

Step 1: Sign in to the Azure Portal
Go to https://portal.azure.com and sign in with your Azure credentials.

Step 2: Navigate to Virtual Machines
In the left-hand navigation pane, click on "Virtual Machines". If it’s not visible, use the search bar at the top to search for “Virtual Machines.

• Step 3: Click on "Create" Click the "+ Create" button and select "Azure virtual machine".

• Create a Resource Group and give your resource group a name
• Choose region

• Give your Virtual machine a name

• Choose Availability Options (Zones)

• Choose Image (Software that will run the Virtual Machine)

• To Save cost, select/click Run with Azure Spot discount

• To access internet, select Public inbound ports, for testing choose to allow selected ports, for real live, choose none and create your own as a professional

• Select inbound ports, choose HTTP for windows and SSH for Linux, RDP will be automatically selected

• Click to confirm the Licensing

• Go to Monitoring and Select Disable to disable the virtual Machine from running

• -Go to Tags, under Name put Department, under value, put the name of your department e.g. HR

• Review and Create to complete the Deployment

• To connect to the virtual machine, click the connect button

• We are going to use native RDP, Click Select

• Access the Downloaded RDP File on your Computer and Click Connect to connect to your Virtual Machine

• Input the Username and Password that you have created earlier to login to your virtual machine

• Increase the Virtual machine idle time from 4 minutes to 30 minutes, go to Virtual machine ip address- overview-configuration-ip address-increase the idle time

• save your work

• Dissociate the Virtual Machine from running

• Whenever you want to use the virtual machine, go back and click associate to reconnect the virtual machine

• Stop the virtual machine from running, go to Home page, go to overview page, click on stop to stop the virtual machine from running

• Whenever you want to run the virtual machine, go back and click start

Comments

[疏影]

Step-by-step VM creation guide — useful for setting up the dev workstation. The piece I'd add: once the VM is up, the storage question is the next decision. Same as the rest of the article's process, you want the storage side to be boring.
Three patterns that work well for VM-attached storage in this scenario:

• Azure Files SMB: mount as a drive letter (Z:) using the storage account key, or domain-joined with AD DS creds if the VM is on a domain. Survives reboot, shows up in File Explorer like a normal drive.
• Azure Blob: not natively browsable as a filesystem; mount via a tool that bridges Blob containers to a drive letter (ScsDriver does this for SMB / S3-compatible / WebDAV / SFTP from a single mount table, including Azure Blob). Useful when you want cheap cold storage behind a normal folder.
• For VMs that need both hot and cold: layer Azure Files (hot) and Azure Blob (cool/cold) into the same mount client — the user gets one filesystem, you get the cost split. Operational note: make sure the storage account's firewall rules allow the VM's subnet, otherwise the mount will look successful in the client and then hang on first read. That's the most common 'why is it slow' complaint.