Fedora on Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure is one of the major cloud platforms where Fedora Cloud images are officially supported and regularly updated by the Fedora Cloud SIG.

Fedora images are directly accessible through Azure’s Community Gallery, providing a seamless deployment experience without requiring manual image uploads.

Prerequisites

For secure access to your Fedora virtual machines, SSH key pairs are required. Azure can generate these automatically during VM creation, or you can provide your own existing keys.

Deploy Fedora VMs

There are two primary methods to deploy Fedora virtual machines on Azure:

  1. Web Portal: Using either the Fedora Project’s cloud launch page or Azure’s Community Gallery

  2. Azure CLI: Command-line deployment

Method 1: Web Portal Deployment

Ensure you are authenticated to Azure Portal before proceeding.

Option A: Using Fedora Project Cloud Launch

This method provides the quickest deployment path. The Fedora Project website integrates directly with Azure, automatically selecting the appropriate image for your chosen region.

Toggle "Show Beta downloads" on the Cloud launch page to access the latest beta images for deployment.

  1. Navigate to Fedora Cloud Launch page.

  2. Choose your preferred Azure region from the available options

  3. The system will redirect you directly to Azure’s VM creation interface

Option B: Using Azure Community Gallery

For more control over the deployment process, manually navigate through Azure’s Community Gallery to select Fedora images.

Finding Fedora Images

  1. Access the Community images service in Azure Portal

  2. Apply a filter for "Public gallery name" and locate Fedora’s gallery: Fedora-5e266ba4-2250-406d-adad-5d73860d958f

  3. Select the Fedora image that matches your requirements (version and architecture)

  4. Use Azure Quick Create Documentation for the vm configuration.

Post-Deployment Access

Once deployment completes (typically takes 2-3 minutes), Azure displays your VM details including the assigned public IP address. To connect to your Fedora instance:

  1. Download your SSH private key when prompted

  2. Connect to Virtual Machine with default user azureuser.

ssh -i ~/Downloads/your-key-name.pem azureuser@YOUR-PUBLIC-IP

Method 2: Azure CLI Deployment

The Azure Command Line Interface provides a powerful alternative for users who prefer programmatic deployment or need to automate VM creation processes. While the CLI requires more specific knowledge of Azure parameters, it offers greater speed and automation capabilities.

Install the Azure CLI on your local machine to manage deployments and configure resources.

sudo dnf install azure-cli
az login  # Authenticate your account
az account show # Verify correct subscription
The login process will open your browser and may take a few moments to complete.

Discovering Available Images

Fedora maintains multiple image definitions within Azure’s Community Gallery, covering different releases and hardware architectures. Each image definition contains various versions, with new versions added regularly for security updates and improvements.

To list all available Fedora image definitions:

az sig image-definition list-community \
  --public-gallery-name Fedora-5e266ba4-2250-406d-adad-5d73860d958f \
  --location eastus \
  --query '[].name'

Creating For viewing specific versions of an image definition:

az sig image-version list-community \
  --public-gallery-name Fedora-5e266ba4-2250-406d-adad-5d73860d958f \
  --gallery-image-definition "Fedora-Cloud-42-x64" \
  --location eastus \
  --query '[?!excludeFromLatest].uniqueId'

Creating Virtual Machines

Please follow this Virtual Machine Creation guide from the Azure documentation using Azure CLI

Use --image option with specific fedora version /CommunityGalleries/Fedora-5e266ba4-2250-406d-adad-5d73860d958f/Images/<Fedora-Cloud-42-x64>/<Versions>/<latest> during vm creation.

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