01 - Exploring Scaling and Load Balancing with VM Scale Sets
- Hafeez Baig |
- 25 steps |
- 2 minutes
Sign in into the **Microsoft Azure Portal**
Type **Virtual Machine scale sets** in the search bar and click on the **Virtual Machine scale sets**
**What are Virtual Machine scale sets?**\ \ Virtual Machine scale sets in Azure are a service that allows you to deploy and manage a set of identical, auto-scaling virtual machines. They enable you to automatically increase or decrease the number of VMs based on demand, ensuring high availability and performance for your applications.
On the **Virtual machine scale set** dashboard, click on the **Create** dropdown button
Click on the **Resource group** dropdown and select the resource group **computer-rg** option **Note:** If you do not have a Resource group, you can create one by clicking on the **Create new** link option
**What is Resource group?**\ \ A resource group is a logical container in Azure that holds related Azure resources such as virtual machines, databases, web apps, and storage accounts. It helps organize and manage these resources as a single unit, enabling easier management, monitoring, and resource deployment.
Scroll to the **Scale set details** section and enter **Virtual machine scale set name** as "**vm-scale-set-1"**
Click on the **Availability zone** dropdown and select all the Zones options
**What are Availability zones?**\ \ Availability Zones in Azure are physically separate locations within an Azure region, designed to provide high availability and fault tolerance. Each zone has its own power, cooling, and networking, ensuring that if one zone experiences issues, others continue to operate normally, helping to protect your applications from data center failures.
Scroll to the **Orchestration mode** section and select the option **Uniform: optimized for large scale stateless workloads with identical instances**
**What is Uniform Orchestration Mode in Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets?**\ \ In **Uniform Orchestration Mode** for Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets, all virtual machines (VMs) are identical, with the same configuration, size, and image. This mode simplifies management and scaling by ensuring that every VM in the scale set has the same settings and software. It is ideal for scenarios where you need consistent performance and configuration across all instances, such as web front-ends or stateless applications.
Scroll to the **Scaling** section and select the option **Manually update the capacity: Maintain a fixed amount of instances**
**What does the option "Manually update the capacity: Maintain a fixed number of instances" mean in Scaling?** The option **"Manually update the capacity: Maintain a fixed number of instances"** in Scaling means that you can manually set and control the number of virtual machines in your scale set. The number of instances remains constant unless you manually adjust it, rather than automatically scaling up or down based on demand.
Scroll to the **Instance count** text input field and enter "**2**"
Click on the **Public key source** dropdown and select the option **Use existing key stored in Azure** **Note:** You can also select **Generate new key pair** option if you do not have an existing key pair
When you choose the "**Generate new key pair**" option, a public key will be downloaded to your system. This key can later be used for connecting to and authenticating with the virtual machine in Azure.
If you have selected **Use existing key stored in Azure** option, click on the **Stored Keys** dropdown and select the option **my-first-vm_key-2-azure**
Click on the **Networking** tab to modify Network configuration
Scroll to the **Network interface** section and click on the **Edit** widget of Name **computer-rg-vnet-nic01**
**What is Network Interface Card (NIC) in VM Azure?**\ \ In Azure, a network interface (NIC) for a virtual machine (VM) is essentially the network connection point for the VM. It defines the virtual network settings for the VM, including the IP configuration, DNS settings, and network security group associations. The network interface facilitates communication between the VM and other resources, both within and outside of the Azure network.