Create virtual machines in a Flexible scale set using Azure portal

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Applies to: ✔️ Flexible scale sets

This article steps through using Azure portal to create a virtual machine scale set in Flexible orchestration mode. For more information about Flexible scale sets, see Flexible orchestration mode for virtual machine scale sets.

Caution

The orchestration mode is defined when you create the scale set and cannot be changed or updated later.

Log in to Azure

Log in to the Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com.

Create a virtual machine scale set

You can deploy a scale set with a Windows Server image or Linux image such as RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu, or SLES.

  1. In the Azure portal search bar, search for and select Virtual machine scale sets.

  2. Select Create on the Virtual machine scale sets page.

  3. In the Basics tab, under Project details, make sure the correct subscription is selected and select myVMSSResourceGroup from resource group list.

  4. Under Scale set details, set myScaleSet for your scale set name and select a Region that is close to your area.

  5. Under Orchestration, select the Flexible option for Orchestration mode.

  6. Under Instance details, select a marketplace image for Image. In this example, we have chosen Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS.

  7. Enter your desired username, and select which authentication type you prefer.

    • A Password must be at least 12 characters long and meet three out of the four following complexity requirements: one lower case character, one upper case character, one number, and one special character. For more information, see username and password requirements.
    • If you select a Linux OS disk image, you can instead choose SSH public key. Only provide your public key, such as ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub. You can use the Azure Cloud Shell from the portal to create and use SSH keys.

  8. Select Next to move the the next page.

  9. Leave the defaults for the Disks page.

  10. Select Next to move the the next page.

  11. On the Networking page, under Load balancing, select the Use a load balancer checkbox to put the scale set instances behind a load balancer.

  12. In Load balancing options, select Azure load balancer.

  13. In Select a load balancer, select a load balancer or create a new one.

  14. For Select a backend pool, select Create new, type myBackendPool, then select Create.

    Note

    For related information on networking for Flexible scale sets, see scalable network connectivity for Flexible scale sets.

  15. Select Next to move the the next page.

  16. On the Scaling page, set the initial instance count field to 5. You can set this number up to 1000.

  17. For the Scaling policy, keep it Manual.

  18. When you are done, select Review + create.

  19. After it passes validation, select Create to deploy the scale set.

Clean up resources

When no longer needed, delete the resource group, scale set, and all related resources. To do so, select the resource group for the scale set and then select Delete.

Next steps

Learn how to create a Flexible scale with Azure CLI.