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Linux virtual machines in Azure

Create and deploy enterprise-grade open-source and community-driven software in seconds and reduce costs.

Get up and running with your favorite Linux distribution

Select your preferred distribution with Azure Linux virtual machines (VMs), including Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, and CoreOS—more than 50 percent of all Azure compute cores are Linux. Use preconfigured solutions from Oracle and other open-source VM-compatible providers and find Azure-optimized Linux images from publishers of your choice. Get the cloud's only co-located technical support from Azure, Red Hat, and SUSE with just one ticket. Choose the underlying processors – AMD, Arm64, or Intel - that best meet your requirements.

The new Arm64-based VMs are now generally available. Read the announcement.

Use the tools and stacks you love

Develop applications in Java, Python, PHP, Node.js, Go, .NET Core, and other technologies and deploy them in Linux VMs. Create your solutions and host Java application servers using Apache Tomcat, Red Hat JBoss, IBM WebSphere, or Oracle WebLogic in Azure VMs. Run databases including MySQL and MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, SQL on Linux, Cassandra, and Redis.

Buy reservations for your Linux VMs and save up to 72 percent

Reduce costs—up to 72 percent compared to pay-as-you-go prices—with one-year or three-year terms on Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances for Linux. Combine reserved instances with Azure Hybrid Benefit for Linux to use your pre-existing on-premises Red Hat or SUSE software subscriptions on Azure. Alternatively, prepay for your SUSE and Red Hat software usage in Azure to save money compared to pay-as-you-go prices.

Learn more about Azure Hybrid Benefit for Linux

Customize and accelerate your Linux VM deployments

Deploy Linux VMs faster through Azure Resource Manager with community-contributed quickstart templates. Provision and manage Linux VMs in Azure using your favorite DevOps tools, including Ansible, OpenShift, Chef, Jenkins, Puppet, and Terraform.

Get built-in security and management for your Linux VMs

Improve the security of your Azure Linux VMs by integrating your workloads with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) authentication. Monitor your VMs by collecting, viewing, and analyzing log data and use extensions to configure diagnostics. Troubleshoot your Linux VMs in production using the virtual machine serial console.

Secure and protect your VMs

Comprehensive security and compliance, built in

Learn more about security on Azure
Find the right Azure VMs for your needs and budget with the virtual machines selector

Get the power, control, and customization you need at competitive prices

Configure and estimate the costs of your Azure VMs using the pricing calculator or learn more about Linux VM pricing.

Trusted by companies of all sizes

“We want to expand our use of Azure for as many use cases as possible. The cloud gives us more opportunities to innovate, so we can keep offering more and more value for all Canadians.”

Paolo Chiarotto, Senior Director, SAP Platform, Loblaw Companies Limited
Loblaw Companies Limited

“Running SAP solutions on Azure gives us the agility and flexibility we need to disrupt our industry in a way that improves our customers’ access to the products and services they need.”

Dan Regalado, Vice President of Global Technology Transformation and Strategic Partnerships, Walgreens Boots Alliance
Walgreens Boots Alliance

A central source of protected IT services for 200 organizations

Mount Sinai boosts collaboration between more than 10,000 providers to improve care with Microsoft Azure.

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Everything you need to get started with Linux VMs

Get instant access and a $200 credit by signing up for an Azure free account.

Learn how to provision your first VM with 5-minute quickstart tutorials and developer documentation.

Enhance your VM with additional features, like security and backup services.

Documentation, training, and migration resources

5-minute quickstart

Build an NGINX web-server within an Ubuntu VM using:

Learning modules

Learn how to provision VMs on Azure with step-by-step guidance from Microsoft Learn.

Community and Azure support

Ask questions and get support from Microsoft engineers and Azure community experts.

Migrate to Azure

Manage costs and migrate apps, data, and infrastructure with these free resources.

Start your cloud journey at the Azure migration center

Popular templates and labs

Discover self-paced labs and popular quickstart templates for common configurations.

Pre-provisioned VMs and partner solutions

Connect with certified partners and choose from thousands of apps and VM images on:

Frequently asked questions about Azure and Azure VMs

  • Azure supports all the major Linux distributions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, CoreOS, Debian, Oracle Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise, openSUSE, and Ubuntu.
  • A range of guest operating systems, including the Azure-endorsed Linux distributions and supported Windows Server versions. Migrate virtual machines from these VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V environments with Azure Site Recovery. VMs migrated from these on-premises virtualization platforms run as native Azure IaaS VMs and aren’t dependent on the on-premises hypervisor.
  • Azure offers a broad range of virtual machines—there’s a VM for every workload. View the entire set of Azure Virtual Machine Series or read the documentation for Linux VMs to learn more.
  • The Azure VM technical documentation pages, Azure VM Series pages, and Azure VM pricing calculator can help you determine your VM needs.
  • See Azure product availability by region.

  • You get co-located technical support from Azure, Red Hat, and SUSE with just one ticket. Explore Azure support options and choose the plan that best fits your needs.

    Learn more about supported distributions and versions

  • Of course. Create an Azure free account to learn how Azure works, try products and cloud services, and view tutorials on how to deploy your first solution in 10 minutes or less.

    Get started

  • There are no upfront costs and you only pay for what you use. Use Azure Reserved VM Instances and save up to 72 percent. Additionally, through Azure Hybrid Benefit for Linux, you can use your pre-existing on-premises Red Hat or SUSE software subscriptions on Azure. Alternatively, pre-pay for your SUSE and Red Hat software usage in Azure, and save money over pay-as-you-go prices.
  • Yes. Learn more about Azure dev/test pricing and take advantage of discounts on a variety of other Azure services.

  • More than 95 percent of Fortune 500 companies use Azure. Azure has more global regions than any cloud provider and offers the most comprehensive set of compliance offerings. Azure offers built-in support for the most popular integrated development environments trusted by more than 20 million developers—Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code. Compare Azure vs. AWS. And, according to the Linux Foundation, Microsoft is a significant contributor to the Linux kernel.

    Compare Azure vs. AWS

  • Explore this comprehensive approach. There are several Microsoft and partner tools and a large ecosystem of partners to help migrate on-premises VMs to Azure. Visit the Azure migration center to learn more.
  • Create Linux VMs in Azure through the Azure portal, Azure PowerShell, or Azure CLI:
    • The Azure portal provides a browser-based user interface to create VMs and associated resources.
    • Use the Azure PowerShell module to create and manage Azure resources from the PowerShell command line or in scripts.
    • Use the Azure CLI to create and manage Azure resources from the command line or in scripts.

    For more information please refer to the documentation.

  • Microsoft offers a range of OS-independent SLAs for Azure VMs. Read the SLA for Azure Virtual Machines.
  • Most Azure VMs come with temporary non-persistent local storage. Additionally, Azure offers HDD and SSD storage for data. Learn more about Azure Disk Storage. Refer to the Azure VM technical documentation to learn about the Azure disks that are available for each VM series.
  • Virtual Machine Scale Sets help you create and manage a group of load-balanced and autoscaling VMs. Deploy virtual machine scale sets using Azure Resource Manager templates, which support Windows and Linux platform images and custom images and extensions.
  • Take advantage of Azure Hybrid Benefit to use your existing on-premises Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server subscriptions when you convert your Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server pay-as-you-go Azure VMs to bring-your-own-subscription billing. Typically, VMs deployed from pay-as-you-go images on Azure will incur both an infrastructure fee and a software fee. With Azure Hybrid Benefit, pay-as-you-go VMs can be converted to a bring-your-own-subscription billing model without a redeployment, so you can avoid any risk of downtime. Refer to the documentation for more information.

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