Requirement
If you want to learn cloud computing service, and want to perform some practical use cases, then you can start with the Azure free account. You can leverage many of the services available for free. You can get all the services details available free in this post. It is a good platform to make yourself handy with Azure cloud services.
If you want to know the benefits, products, and services available in the Free Account, you can check this Free Products & Services in Azure post.
Solution
Prerequisite
- Create your account with outlook / GitHub account
Step 1: Go to Azure Portal
Go to the Azure URL and login with either a Microsoft or GitHub account.
Once you log in successfully, you will see the Azure Home Page as above. If you see the first tile, it is showing the totally free credit toward Azure products and services. Click on Start.
Step 2: Create a subscription account
A new page will open. If you see in below screenshot, there are 4 sections (Your profile, Identity verification by phone, Identity verification by card, agreement) and right side all the details about the free subscription (12 Months of free products, 13300 amount credit, 25+ always free products, No automatic charges).
In Identity verification by card section, you are required to provide credit card details. It will charge 2 in INR.
Here, you can see the Merchant is Microsoft and the amount is Rs. 2 (in case outside of India, it would be in $).
Once you complete the verification by card, you are required to agree to the agreement in the last section and submit.
Step 3: Understand the Azure Portal
It will land you to the Azure Home Page after setting up Azure Free Account. Here, you can see the amount which has been credited to the account. This amount is valid for the next 31 days.
It will also show some templates of the app/services to get started with.
You can also learn about the services mentioned in the second tab named Take an online course.
On the left side, you can see the multiple options related to the subscriptions, resources, cost management, help +support, etc.
Step 4: Verify the Azure Free Account
Click on the View My Bill available under My Profile in the top right corner. You will see all the details like subscription, payment details, etc. If you click on subscription, it will show a default subscription name Free Trial with status active.
Click on the Free Trial subscription, you will see the below page, where you can manage (create/cancel) the subscription.
Coming back to the billing page, you can also check the card details under Payment methods.
Note: You should have at least 1 payment method. Here, we have only one payment detail, that’s why the delete option is disabled.
Wrapping Up
In this post, we have created an Azure Free Account. We got a free credit of $200/Rs. 13300 to the account to explore the products and services. It is a good amount for exploring Azure products and services.