Quickstart: Create and encrypt a Linux VM in Azure with Azure PowerShell

Applies to: ✔️ Linux VMs ✔️ Flexible scale sets

The Azure PowerShell module is used to create and manage Azure resources from the PowerShell command line or in scripts. This quickstart shows you how to use the Azure PowerShell module to create a Linux virtual machine (VM), create a Key Vault for the storage of encryption keys, and encrypt the VM. This quickstart uses the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS marketplace image from Canonical and a VM Standard_D2S_V3 size. However, any ADE supported Linux image version could be used instead of an Ubuntu VM.

If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a Trial before you begin.

Create a resource group

Create an Azure resource group with New-AzResourceGroup. A resource group is a logical container into which Azure resources are deployed and managed:

New-AzResourceGroup -Name "myResourceGroup" -Location "ChinaEast2"

Create a virtual machine

Create an Azure virtual machine with New-AzVM, passing to it the VM configuration object you created in the previous step.

$cred = Get-Credential

New-AzVM -Name MyVm -Credential $cred -ResourceGroupName MyResourceGroup -Image Canonical:UbuntuServer:18.04-LTS:latest -Size Standard_D2S_V3

It takes a few minutes for your VM to be deployed.

Create a Key Vault configured for encryption keys

Azure disk encryption stores its encryption key in an Azure Key Vault. Create a Key Vault with New-AzKeyvault. To enable the Key Vault to store encryption keys, use the -EnabledForDiskEncryption parameter.

New-AzKeyvault -name "<your-unique-keyvault-name>" -ResourceGroupName "myResourceGroup" -Location ChinaEast2 -EnabledForDiskEncryption

Encrypt the virtual machine

Encrypt your VM with Set-AzVmDiskEncryptionExtension.

Set-AzVmDiskEncryptionExtension requires some values from your Key Vault object. You can obtain these values by passing the unique name of your key vault to Get-AzKeyvault.

$KeyVault = Get-AzKeyVault -VaultName "<your-unique-keyvault-name>" -ResourceGroupName "MyResourceGroup"

Set-AzVMDiskEncryptionExtension -ResourceGroupName MyResourceGroup -VMName "MyVM" -DiskEncryptionKeyVaultUrl $KeyVault.VaultUri -DiskEncryptionKeyVaultId $KeyVault.ResourceId -SkipVmBackup -VolumeType All

After a few minutes the process will return the following:

RequestId IsSuccessStatusCode StatusCode ReasonPhrase
--------- ------------------- ---------- ------------
                         True         OK OK

You can verify the encryption process by running Get-AzVmDiskEncryptionStatus.

Get-AzVmDiskEncryptionStatus -VMName MyVM -ResourceGroupName MyResourceGroup

When encryption is enabled, you will see the following in the returned output:

OsVolumeEncrypted          : EncryptionInProgress
DataVolumesEncrypted       : NotMounted
OsVolumeEncryptionSettings : Microsoft.Azure.Management.Compute.Models.DiskEncryptionSettings
ProgressMessage            : OS disk encryption started

Clean up resources

When no longer needed, you can use the Remove-AzResourceGroup cmdlet to remove the resource group, VM, and all related resources:

Remove-AzResourceGroup -Name "myResourceGroup"

Next steps

In this quickstart, you created a virtual machine, created a Key Vault that was enable for encryption keys, and encrypted the VM. Advance to the next article to learn more about Azure Disk Encryption for Linux VMs.