Azure Lab Setup

Introduction

For our Azure environment we will create the following things:

Pricing!

Before we move anywhere it's best to calculate costs. Obviously, we want to spend the least amount of money as possible. If done correctly, it'll be close to if not free .

If free trial fails, the is a good place to start to get an estimate of your monthy expenses.

Creating Azure Tenants

Create M365 Business Basic

Free Entra ID Tenant with $200 USD License

Create E3 License

Purview Trial

Create E3 M365 License

Create an M365 Business Account

In order to access admin.microsoft.com, we'll need to have a business account. This will give us access to all Microsoft Office applications. Purchase the Basic account.

Create an Azure Account

It's recommended to purchase a new domain and register an email with it as we'll be able utilize Microsofts free Azure 12 month trial for newly registered accounts. You may want to go grab a prepaid SIM card as well because you'll need to provide a phone number that isn't registered to an existing M365 account. Once everything is ready to go, continue with the steps below.

Create Users

We'll create a global admin user along with 2-3 regular users for this lab environment.

Navigate to portal.azure.com -> Microsoft Entra ID

Click User -> Create new user

Assign user to Global Administrator

Create two more regular users

We now should have one Global Administrator & two regular users.

Create E3 License

Next we want to register for an E3 License. This may take up to 3 business days for the registration to complete.

Go to the catalog under products and search "E3".

Assign E3 License

After purchases our Office 365 E3 License, go back to our azure portal (portal.azure.com) and assign the license to a user. We can do so by searching "Licenses" > "All Products" > "Assign".

After assigning the license to a user we should see our updated licensed user.