Microsoft Azure: First steps (create an account and logging in)

After doing a lot of things with amazon webserivces (AWS) i decided to take a look an Microsoft Azure.

Starting point is azure.microsoft.com

 

I just clicked on "Start free" and was asked to login with any already existing microsoft account (live.com, etc). In the registration process you have to provide a phone number for verification (by call or by message) and             then your credit card information. 

No worries, microsoft offers a start with 170$ credit:

After the registration you can attend to an online course,

 but i decided to move onto the portal:

And here we go:

 Looks like the settings manager from XFCE (a linux desktop manager) ;-)

I clicked on virtual machines and of course there are listed no machines but a big blue button for adding VMs.

 But this will be topic of another posting...