To create a VM scale set from the Azure portal, take the following steps:

1. Navigate to the Azure portal by opening https://portal.azure.com.
2. Click on Create a resource and type in Scale Set in the search bar. Select Virtual machine scale set.
3. In the next screen, click on Create and add the following settings for creating the scale set:
   • Virtual machine scale set name: PacktScaleSet
   • Operating system disk image: Windows Server 2016 Datacenter
   • Subscription: Select a subscription
   • Resource group: PacktVMGroup
   • Location: (US) East US
   • Availability zone: None
   • Username: SCPacktUser
   • Password: Fill in a password
   • Instance count: 2
   • Instance size: Standard DS1 v2
   • Deploy as low priority: No
   • Use managed disks: Yes
4. If you scroll down, you can configure the autoscale settings, choose between the different load balancing settings, and configure networking and monitoring capabilities, as follows:

5. Scroll down again and keep the default settings for network security ports and so on.
6. Click Create. The scale set with the number of provided VMs in it is now deployed.

In the next section of this chapter, we are going to cover how to automate the deployment of VMs using ARM templates.