Chapter 2. Creating and automatically uploading VHD images to Microsoft Azure cloud

Procedure

1. In the RHEL image builder dashboard, select the blueprint you want to use.
2. Click the Images tab.

3. Click Create Image to create your customized .vhd image.

   The Create image wizard opens.

   1. Select Microsoft Azure (.vhd) from the Type drop-down menu list.
   2. Check the Upload to Azure checkbox to upload your image to the Microsoft Azure Cloud.
   3. Enter the Image Size and click Next.

4. On the Upload to Azure page, enter the following information:

   1. On the Authentication page, enter:

      1. Your Storage account name. You can find it on the Storage account page, in the Microsoft Azure portal.
      2. Your Storage access key: You can find it on the Access Key Storage page.
      3. Click Next.

   2. On the Authentication page, enter:

      1. The image name.
      2. The Storage container. It is the blob container to which you will upload the image. Find it under the Blob service section, in the Microsoft Azure portal.
      3. Click Next.

5. On the Review page, click Create. The RHEL image builder and upload processes start.

   Access the image you pushed into Microsoft Azure Cloud.

6. Access the Microsoft Azure portal.
7. In the search bar, type "storage account" and click Storage accounts from the list.
8. On the search bar, type "Images" and select the first entry under Services. You are redirected to the Image dashboard.
9. On the navigation panel, click Containers.
10. Find the container you created. Inside the container is the .vhd file you created and pushed by using RHEL image builder.

Verification

1. Verify that you can create a VM image and launch it.

   1. In the search bar, type images account and click Images from the list.
   2. Click +Create.
   3. From the dropdown list, choose the resource group you used earlier.
   4. Enter a name for the image.
   5. For the OS type, select Linux.
   6. For the VM generation, select Gen 2.
   7. Under Storage Blob, click Browse and click through the storage accounts and container until you reach your VHD file.
   8. Click Select at the end of the page.
   9. Choose an Account Type, for example, Standard SSD.
   10. Click Review + Create and then Create. Wait a few moments for the image creation.

2. To launch the VM, follow the steps:

   1. Click Go to resource.
   2. Click + Create VM from the menu bar on the header.
   3. Enter a name for your virtual machine.
   4. Complete the Size and Administrator account sections.

   5. Click Review + Create and then Create. You can see the deployment progress.

      After the deployment finishes, click the virtual machine name to retrieve the public IP address of the instance to connect by using SSH.

   6. Open a terminal to create an SSH connection to connect to the VM.