Hands-on Lab Exercises — Azure Compute

Topic: Provisioning and managing Azure compute resources (starting with Virtual Machines).

Welcome. These labs exist to turn you into a Cloud Administrator — someone who manages, maintains, and secures a company's cloud environment. Not someone who has memorised every command. A real admin doesn't know everything; they know which breadcrumbs to follow. These exercises train exactly that.

Each problem is a short real-world scenario. Your job is to work out what it demands and solve it with the tools at your disposal. You get a script to check your work and a full solution walkthrough — freely — because this is a low-stakes place to build competency. Break things here so you don't have to break them in production.

The three skills we're building

1. Reading documentation — the first question an admin asks is "where are the provider's docs for X?" Learn to navigate them and you can learn any service.
2. Tooling — we use the Azure CLI (az) exclusively. No portal. We like the hard way, because the hard way is the way that sticks.
3. Troubleshooting — when things break: composure first. Understand the cause, fix it, and write down what happened.

Prerequisites

• Azure subscription — a paid (pay-as-you-go) subscription is assumed. The labs use general-purpose VM sizes that free-tier accounts often can't provision.
• A lab VM to work from (set it up below). The Azure CLI runs there, not on your laptop.

Set up your lab environment

✅ This lab is verified on Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Server — the recommended environment. Do the exercises from a dedicated Azure lab VM (a "jumpbox") running Ubuntu 26.04. Working from a clean, disposable VM keeps your machine tidy and matches how admins actually operate: from a managed box inside the cloud.

1. Provision the lab VM (Ubuntu 26.04). You need the Azure CLI to create a VM, but you don't have it yet — so bootstrap this first VM from Azure Cloud Shell (the CLI is pre-installed there) or the Azure Portal. From Cloud Shell, run:

az group create -n lab-jumpbox-rg -l eastus
az vm create \
  --resource-group lab-jumpbox-rg \
  --name           lab-jumpbox \
  --image          Canonical:ubuntu-26_04-lts:server:latest \
  --size           Standard_D2s_v3 \
  --admin-username azureuser \
  --generate-ssh-keys

2. SSH into the lab VM (use the publicIpAddress printed by the command above):

ssh azureuser@<publicIpAddress>

3. Install the Azure CLI on the lab VM. On Ubuntu, one command does it:

curl -sL https://aka.ms/InstallAzureCLIDeb | sudo bash

• Azure CLI install (all platforms): https://learn.microsoft.com/cli/azure/install-azure-cli
• Azure CLI install on Linux (Ubuntu/Debian): https://learn.microsoft.com/cli/azure/install-azure-cli-linux

4. Log in. A lab VM has no browser, so use the device-code flow — it prints a URL and a code you enter from any browser:

az login --use-device-code
az account show     # confirm the right subscription is active

5. Install git and clone this repo onto the lab VM:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y git
git clone https://github.com/sailplatform/cloud-admin-lab-exercises-compute.git
cd cloud-admin-lab-exercises-compute

6. You're ready — start the first question:

cd virtual-machines/Question-1-Provision-Linux-VM
./setup.bash        # then read problem.md and solve it

⚠️ Cost warning. These labs create real Azure resources that cost real money — including the lab VM itself. Exercises use modest, widely-available general-purpose sizes (e.g. Standard_D2s_v3), and each question is isolated in its own resource group so you can wipe it in one command. Bill by the minute: provision, solve, validate, then always run the cleanup step when you finish a question. When you're completely done, delete the lab VM too:

az group delete -n lab-jumpbox-rg --yes --no-wait

How each question is structured

Every graded question lives in its own self-contained folder with five files:

File	What it is
setup.bash	Prepares/pre-checks the environment for the question.
problem.md	The scenario and the exact requirements ("done" criteria).
validate.bash	Automated PASS/FAIL checks against your subscription.
solution.md	A detailed walkthrough of how an admin reasons about it — read this if you get stuck.
cleanup.bash	Deletes everything the question created.

setup.bash, validate.bash, and cleanup.bash are executable scripts you run from inside the question folder — no central runner, no question numbers to remember. All scripts are open source: read them. Seeing how a check maps to an az ... --query is good practice in itself.

The workflow

Everything happens inside a single question folder — cd into it and go:

cd virtual-machines/Question-1-Provision-Linux-VM

./setup.bash       # 1. Prepare/preflight the environment (and, where relevant, provision the starting VM)

# 2. Read problem.md and solve it yourself with the Azure CLI.
#    Stuck? Open solution.md in the same folder.

./validate.bash    # 3. Check your work — prints PASS/FAIL for each requirement

./cleanup.bash     # 4. Delete the resources so they stop costing money

That's the whole model: one folder, three commands (./setup.bash, ./validate.bash, ./cleanup.bash). Because each folder is self-contained, adding new topics (App Services, containers, …) never changes how you run anything.

Configuration — make it yours

Shared settings live in lab-config.sh at the repo root — most importantly the region (LAB_LOCATION, default eastus). If eastus is far from you or lacks quota, change it there once and every script follows. You can also override per run:

LAB_LOCATION=westeurope ./validate.bash

The practice mindset (why solutions are given freely)

Think of this like working through a math textbook: study the worked example (the graded questions with full solution.md walkthroughs), then drill the exercises at the back of the book (upcoming practice sets — problems only, no solutions) to build muscle memory and confidence. The point isn't to know how to provision a VM — it's to prove you can, and to build the habit of finding the answer when you don't already have it.

Available questions

#	Topic	Skill
1	Provision a Linux VM	Create a resource group + Ubuntu 26.04 VM from scratch
2	Open a Port with an NSG	Diagnose closed connectivity; add an inbound rule
3	Resize a VM	Discover valid sizes; resize in place
4	Attach a Data Disk	Create + attach a managed data disk
5	Deallocate a VM	Stop compute billing (Stopped vs Deallocated)
6	Provision with a Provisioner Script	cloud-init installs nginx on first boot; curl the public IP

Graded questions come with full solution.md walkthroughs.

Practice exercises (drill your skills)

Once you've worked the graded questions, drill the 10 practice exercises — problem statements only, no walkthroughs, spanning all six skills plus a few stretches (Windows + RDP, disk snapshots, Docker on boot). They're your reps for building muscle memory, just like the exercises at the back of a textbook.