VM Scale Sets Tutorial

Introduction

VM Scale Sets are an Azure Compute resource that allows you to deploy and manage a set of identical, auto-scaling virtual machines (VMs). VM Scale Sets provide high availability and are designed to support essential applications reliably and at scale. This tutorial covers the creation, management, and scaling of VM Scale Sets from start to finish.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following:

• An Azure account. If you don't have one, you can create a free account at Azure Free Account.
• Azure CLI installed. You can download and install it from here.
• Basic knowledge of Azure and Virtual Machines.

Creating a VM Scale Set

To create a VM Scale Set, follow these steps:

This command will create a VM Scale Set with the following properties:

• Resource Group: myResourceGroup
• VM Scale Set Name: myScaleSet
• Image: UbuntuLTS
• Upgrade Policy Mode: automatic
• Admin Username: azureuser
• SSH Keys: Automatically generated

Scaling the VM Scale Set

To scale the number of instances in your VM Scale Set, use the following command:

This command will scale your VM Scale Set to 5 instances.

Updating Instances in a VM Scale Set

You can update the instances in your VM Scale Set to the latest version of the image or to apply updates. Use the following command:

This command will update all instances in the VM Scale Set.

Monitoring and Diagnostics

Azure provides several tools to monitor and diagnose your VM Scale Sets:

• Azure Monitor: Provides monitoring and alerting capabilities.
• Log Analytics: Collects and analyzes log data from your VM Scale Sets.
• Application Insights: Monitors the performance and usage of your applications.

To view the metrics for your VM Scale Set, navigate to the Azure portal, select your VM Scale Set, and click on Metrics.

Clean Up Resources

To avoid unnecessary charges, make sure to clean up the resources you created. Use the following command to delete the resource group and all associated resources:

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you learned how to create, manage, and scale VM Scale Sets in Azure. VM Scale Sets are a powerful feature that enables you to deploy and manage a set of identical VMs with ease, ensuring high availability and scalability for your applications.