Testing Professor
Testing ProfessorMulti-Cloud Guidebook · Azure
All Azure services

Azure · Compute

Azure Virtual Machines

Linux and Windows VMs on demand.

Official docs

Overview

Azure VMs offer broad OS support, GPU/HPC sizes, scale sets, spot pricing and integration with Bastion for secure access.

When to use it

  • Lift-and-shift workloads
  • Build agents and test runners
  • Workloads needing custom OS images

Setup

  1. Portal → Virtual machines → Create.
  2. Pick image (Ubuntu LTS, Windows Server), size and region.
  3. Choose authentication (SSH key or password).
  4. Configure NSG rules (allow 22/3389 only as needed).
  5. Review + create.

How to use

Create with Azure CLI
az vm create -g qa-rg -n qa-runner \
  --image Ubuntu2204 --size Standard_B2s \
  --admin-username azureuser --generate-ssh-keys
SSH via Bastion
az network bastion ssh -n bastion -g qa-rg --target-resource-id <vm-id> --auth-type ssh-key --username azureuser --ssh-key ~/.ssh/id_rsa

QA use cases

  • Scale set of Playwright runners with shared MSI for keyless secret access.
  • Spot VMs as cheap load generators for k6 fleets.