Create and Manage a VM Scale Set

Azure is a public cloud computing platform. Azure can be used for many purposes, such as analytics, virtual computing, and networking. In particular, Azure provides a powerful tool for hosting virtual machines (VMs). Azure not only provides tools for creating VMs but also VM scale sets, sets of identical VMs that auto-scale. It is, therefore, prudent for modern IT workers to be comfortable working with Azure.

Azure VM scale sets provide many benefits to system administrators. They auto-scale to match CPU usage and accommodate the number of users on the network at a given time. Administrators can also increase or decrease the number of VMs at any time to match current needs. VM scale sets can be easily created and modified using both the Azure portal and PowerShell.

To effectively manage Azure VMs, you need to be able to create and manage an Azure virtual machine scale set. This virtual lab will give you hands-on experience creating an Azure VM scale set, making you more comfortable with the Azure platform and state-of-the-art virtualization technologies.

Understand the scenario: You're a cloud operations engineer for a company with highly elastic demand requirements for a critical, client-facing application. You need to ensure that the application tier can scale horizontally to meet demand while minimizing costs. You will create a scale set that uses a common Linux operating system disk image with load balancing for the server instances.

Understand the environment: You are using a pre-configured Azure resource group.

Create a virtual machine scale set:

For the first step of this virtual lab, you will deploy a virtual machine scale set. You will:

• Sign in to the Azure portal.
• Use the Azure portal to create a virtual machine scale set.
• Configure the instance number and load scaling settings of the virtual machine scale set.

Increase the number of virtual machines in the scale set:

For the second step of this challenge, you will use the Azure PowerShell to reconfigure your scale set. You will learn how to use the 'az vmss scale' command to modify the number of VM instances in your VM scale set.

Stop and deallocate an instance:

For the final step, you will use the Azure portal to deallocate one of the VM scale set VMs.

Summary:

Azure virtual machine scale sets have many uses and benefits. For example, they can be used for load testing applications. The customization available for the scaling of the VMs allows system administrators to quickly and effectively manage VMs on their Azure platform.

In the "Create and Manage a VM Scale Set" virtual lab, you will accomplish the following:

• Deploy an Azure VM scale set using the Azure portal.
• Configure the VM scale set using the Azure PowerShell.
• Reconfigure the VM scale set using the Azure portal.

Other Challenges in this series:

• GUIDED CHALLENGE: Work with Managed Disk Snapshots
• ADVANCED CHALLENGE: Can You Configure High Availability and Scale for Azure VMs?