Introduction
Cloud environments require regular updates and ongoing maintenance to ensure resources remain secure, organized, and efficient. In this guided project based on exercises from Microsoft Learn, we perform a series of management tasks in Microsoft Azure.
The objective of this project is to simulate real administrative work by creating and managing core Azure resources such as resource groups, virtual networks, virtual machines, and storage accounts. These resources will later be modified and managed throughout the remaining exercises in the series.
In this first task, we prepare the environment by provisioning the foundational resources required for the rest of the lab.
Project Overview
In this guided project, you will perform a series of administrative tasks to manage resources in Microsoft Azure. The exercises simulate common responsibilities of a cloud administrator, such as organizing resources, configuring networking, managing compute instances, and controlling storage access.
Throughout the project, you will:
i. Modify and manage a virtual network
ii. Move a virtual machine between subnets
iii. Configure access to storage containers and file shares
iv. Apply resource tags for better organization
v. Use resource locks to protect important resources
These tasks demonstrate practical resource management techniques that are commonly used when maintaining cloud infrastructure in Azure.
Preparing the Azure Environment
Before performing the management tasks, we first need to create the core resources that will be used throughout the lab.
1. Set up the Environment
If you already have a Microsoft Azure account to use for this lab, skip to Login to Microsoft Azure. If you need to create an Azure account, complete the following steps.
Go to the Azure free account page.
Select Try Azure for free
Complete the sign-up process for an Azure account.
2. Login to Azure
Navigate to the Azure portal https://portal.azure.com/auth/login/
Sign in with your Azure account credentials
3. Create a resource group
A resource group acts as a container that holds related Azure resources.
From the Azure portal home page, in the search box, enter resource groups.
Select Resource groups under services.
Select + create.
- Enter a name for the Resource group.
Example:
guided-project-rg
Leave the default Region.
Select Review + create and then click create.
Once completed, a notification will confirm that the resource group was created successfully.
4. Create a virtual network
A virtual network (VNet) enables Azure resources to communicate securely with each other.
- From the Azure portal home page, search for and select virtual networks.
- Select + Create.
- Under Instance details, enter a name for the virtual network
Example
guided-project-vnet
- Select Review + create then create.
Once deployment is complete, return to the Home page.
5. Create a virtual machine
Next, we deploy a Linex virtual machine.
- From the Azure portal, search for and select virtual machines.
- Select + Create → Virtual machine
Choose the Resource group created earlier.
Enter a Virtual machine a name.
Example:
guided-project-vm
- For Image, select:
Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS - x64 Gen2
If the default size is unavailable in your region, select another available size.
- In the Administrator account section:
Authentication type: Password
Example Username:
guided-project-admin
Enter and confirm your password.
- Leave the remaining settings as defaults.
- Select Review + create and select create.
Azure will display an estimated hourly cost for running the VM.
6. Create a Storage account
Finally, we create a storage acount to manage the storage resources.
- From the Azure portal, search for and select storage accounts.
Select + Create.
Entr a Storage account name.
Storage account must be globally unique, so you may need to try multiple variations.
Leave the default settings.Select Review + create, then create.
Once deployment is complete, return to the portal home page.
Conclusion
In this task, we prepared the Azure environment by creating the foundational resources required for the rest of the guided project. This included setting up a resource group, deploying a virtual network, provisioning a virtual machine, and creating a storage account.
These resources will be used in the following exercises to perform administrative tasks such as updating network configurations, managing virtual machines, controlling storage access, and applying resource governance.
In the next task, we will update the virtual network configuration by creating a new subnet to support additional infrastructure requirements.
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