Exercise - Create a VM to host your web application

10 minutes

Like most application frameworks, you can run your MEAN stack application in many different environments. You can run your application on a physical computer in your server room, on a virtual machine, or in containers.

Here you run your application on a virtual machine (VM) running on Azure. MEAN supports many different operating systems. For learning purposes, we use Ubuntu Linux here.

Note

This exercise is optional. If you want to complete this exercise, you'll need to create an Azure subscription before you begin. If you don't have an Azure account or you don't want to create one at this time, you can read through the instructions so you understand the information that's being presented.

Note

You need to use a resource group to complete the steps in this exercise. You can use a resource group that you already created, or you can create a new resource group specifically for this exercise. If you choose to create a new resource group, that will make it easier to clean up any resources that you create as you complete the exercise. If you don't have an existing resource group or you want to create a new one specifically for this exercise, you can follow the steps in Use the Azure portal and Azure Resource Manager to manage resource groups to create a resource group by using the Azure portal, or you can follow the steps in Manage Azure resource groups by using Azure CLI to create a resource group by using the the Azure CLI.

Create an Ubuntu Linux VM

Normally, you create a resource group before you create other resources on Azure. A resource group is a container that holds the resources that are related for an Azure solution. If you haven't already created a resource group, you can run the following command to create a resource group in a location near you.

az group create \
  --name <resource-group-name> \
  --location <resource-group-location>

Open the Azure Cloud Shell, then select Settings > Go to Classic version.

From Cloud Shell, run the az vm create command to create an Ubuntu VM. Replace myResourceGroupName in the following example with the name of an existing resource group, or the name of the resource group that you created for this exercise.

az vm create \
  --resource-group "myResourceGroupName" \
  --name MeanStack \
  --image Canonical:0001-com-ubuntu-server-focal:20_04-lts:latest \
  --admin-username azureuser \
  --generate-ssh-keys

The command takes about two minutes to complete. When the command finishes, you see output similar to this example:

(Output Example)
{
  "fqdns": "",
  "id": "/subscriptions/aaaa0a0a-bb1b-cc2c-dd3d-eeeeee4e4e4e/resourceGroups/myResourceGroupName/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/MeanStack",
  "location": "eastus",
  "macAddress": "00-0D-3A-1E-1B-3B",
  "powerState": "VM running",
  "privateIpAddress": "10.0.0.5",
  "publicIpAddress": "104.211.9.245",
  "resourceGroup": "myResourceGroupName",
  "zones": ""
}

The VM's name is MeanStack. You'll use this name in future commands to identify the VM you want to work with.

Open port 80 on the VM to allow incoming HTTP traffic to the web application that you create later.
```
az vm open-port \
  --port 80 \
  --resource-group "myResourceGroupName" \
  --name MeanStack
```
Create an SSH connection to your VM.

Although the output from the az vm create command displays your VM's public IP address, you might find it useful to store the address in a Bash variable.

Start by running az vm show. This command saves the IP address in a Bash variable named ipaddress.
```
ipaddress=$(az vm show \
  --name MeanStack \
  --resource-group "myResourceGroupName" \
  --show-details \
  --query [publicIps] \
  --output tsv)
```
Connect to your VM like this.
```
ssh azureuser@$ipaddress
```
When prompted, enter yes to save the VM's identity locally so future connections are trusted.

You'll use the SSH connection to configure software on the virtual machine in the next parts.

Summary

With your Ubuntu VM ready to go, you're ready to install each component of the MEAN stack. You start by installing MongoDB.

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