Azure · Virtual machines
Build one machine.Then run many.Keep them available.
Start with a single virtual machine and its resources, then separate hardware risk, spread across zones, and scale a group with demand.
Who is Contoso?
Contoso is the fictional company Microsoft uses across its official documentation and training, so examples stay consistent from one article to the next. It is not a real organization, and no name, value or resource here belongs to one. These lessons follow a small retail part of it.
- Contoso RetailThe online shop these lessons build and run
One server, many machines
Azure runs your virtual machines on physical servers in its datacenters. A virtualization layer divides one server into isolated machines, each with its own operating system and application. These four stops build one machine, keep it available, and then scale it.
AppOSBuild Your First VM8 steps02
AppOSAvailability Sets7 steps03
AppOSVMs Across Availability Zones7 steps04
AppOSVirtual Machine Scale Sets8 stepsYou choose the operating system
Every virtual machine runs its own guest OS. Azure publishes Windows Server and endorsed Linux distributions in the Marketplace, and you can also bring your own image.
Go deeper on Microsoft Learn
Each explainer is grounded in official documentation. Open the source for any stop.