Azure is one of the most in-demand and used cloud platforms currently and
there's no better way to learn that, to get hands-on.
But to be able to use these services Azure has to offer, you'll need an account.
We'll be signing up for a free Azure account today.
The free account includes a trial that provides you with 12 months of access to
popular Azure services and $200 USD in credits to
spend in your first 30 days.
Keep in mind that those amounts may change so just double check before getting
started.
There are more than 25 Azure products that are always free thanks to their free
tier like Linux Virtual Machines, Azure SQL Databases,
Cosmos DB, and my personal favorite Azure Functions.
Even when your trial is done,
there's still plenty to explore without having to spend to create an
account. You'll need a phone number, a credit card,
a Microsoft or GitHub account.
Credit card information during signup is used for identity verification
only. So let's dive in.
Let's head over to
azure.microsoft.com/free.
This page contains some information on the Azure free account.
Go ahead and give it a look before we get started. Once you're done with that,
hit the green Start Free button.
This page will take you to a Microsoft login.
Fantastic. We're now going to sign in with our Microsoft account,
or if you have a GitHub one, you can go ahead and use that
and it looks like I will need to use authenticator to sign in.
All right. And we need to fill in the information in the "Your profile" section.
I'm going to go ahead and do that
next. We have to verify our authentication by the phone number we've
provided.
You will need to provide a phone number and either request a call or a text.
I'm going to hit text
and fill in the verification code that's provided.
Then I'm going to hit verify code. All right, next,
we have to verify our identity by card
and you can see here. It says,
we'll make a temporary authorization on this card,
but you won't be charged unless you upgrade.
I'm going to go ahead and fill in these details.
All right, I'm going to hit next. Okay.
Now we have to agree to the customer agreement and privacy
statements by checking this checkboxs.
You can take some time to review both of these documents.
You've got links to go over both of them,
and we're going to hit that checkbox on the side,
and you can opt in to receive relevant information about
Microsoft partner products and services.
If you'd like by hitting that check box and I click sign up here
and there, we have it.
When you sign up for an Azure account an Azure subscription is also
created by default.
So now we've got our free Azure account and Azure subscription and
$200 USD in credits for the next 30 days to explore.
Alrighty, cloud gurus. We've covered how to create a Microsoft Azure account.
Keep in mind that even though a free account gives you credits,
you could quickly consume those and get charged for consumed services.
In order to avoid this, you'll want to set up budgets and cost alerts.
Additionally,
there are some security best practices that aren't implemented by default.
For example, creating a less privileged user to work with.
I highly recommend you look into these before you start playing around with your
Azure services and don't worry,
I've added some additional resources in the show notes of this episode.
That's it for this episode of ACG Fundamentals,
go on and create your free account. Give us a thumbs up once you do.
Don't forget to subscribe for more cloud content.
Keep being awesome Cloud Gurus. See you in the next one.