Virtual Machines
IaaS compute with sizing, managed disks, extensions, networking and the deallocation behaviour that controls billing.
Readiness
0%
3h baseline
Exam memorization points
- Size families: B burstable, D general purpose, E memory optimised, F compute optimised, N GPU, L storage optimised, M largest memory.
- Managed disk types in order of performance and cost: Standard HDD, Standard SSD, Premium SSD, Premium SSD v2, Ultra Disk.
- Availability SLAs: single VM with Premium SSD or Ultra 99.9%, availability set 99.95%, availability zones 99.99%.
- An availability set spreads VMs across fault domains (separate physical racks) and update domains (separate maintenance batches).
- The temporary disk is local to the host, is not persisted, and its data is lost on deallocation, resize or host maintenance.
- Deallocate (or Stop in the portal) releases the compute allocation and stops compute billing; shutting down from inside the guest keeps billing running.
Traps & distractors
- Deleting a VM and assuming its managed disks, NICs and public IPs are cleaned up. They are separate resources unless explicitly deleted.
- Resizing to a size that the current host does not support. The VM must be deallocated first.
- Believing the temporary disk is durable. Never place data there and never use it for the page file of a critical workload.
- Assuming the NSG is attached to the VM. Network security groups attach to the subnet or the NIC, not to the VM object.
- Forgetting the VM agent, which is required for extensions, backup and most monitoring scenarios.
Suggested lab
Deploy, resize and harden a VM without a public IP
Wire storage, networking and access together the way the exam expects.
- 1Deploy an Ubuntu VM into an existing subnet with no public IP, using SSH key authentication.
- 2Inspect the OS disk, temp disk and the NIC, and confirm which resources are deleted with the VM.
- 3Add a second data disk and bring it online inside the OS.
- 4Deallocate the VM, then start it and verify the temporary disk was recreated empty.
- 5Resize the VM to a different size in the same family and confirm the sequence required.
Microsoft Learn
- Virtual machines in Azuredoc
- Search Microsoft Learn: Azure VM sizes managed disks temporary disk deallocate resizesearch
Live Microsoft Learn ingestion is a Sprint 2 item; until then links are curated and the search fallback always resolves.
Status
No time invested yet. Baseline assumptions only.
Self-assessed mastery
0%
Critical priority
High-yield and still weak. Study this next.
- Exam importance100% × 30% = 30.0
Learner-agnostic frequency on the real exam (5/5).
- Blueprint weight100% × 25% = 25.0
This topic's domain carries 22.5% of the exam objectives.
- Dependency leverage47% × 20% = 9.5
4 later topics depend on it.
- Current gap100% × 25% = 25.0
Readiness is 0%, so 100% of the topic is still uncovered.
Exam Priority Score = 30% importance + 25% blueprint + 20% dependency + 25% gap. Importance is exam frequency, blueprint is the domain's official exam weight, dependency is how many later topics this one unlocks, and gap is how far you currently are from ready.
Unlocks next
Baseline study time
3h
Complexity
3 / 5
Remaining to target
2h 33m
Status weight
0%
Topics: vm, managed disk, temp disk, deallocate, extension, nic, vm agent
Weak neighbours in Compute