Throughout this book, we will be using Azure as the cloud provider of choice. If you want to follow along and do not currently have an account, then you can create one at https://azure.microsoft.com/. At the time of writing, you can sign up for free and receive £150/$200 of credits for the first month.
Once you've signed up, visit https://portal.azure.com. Here, you can manage your Azure resources and check your balance.
All cloud providers (at least at the time of writing) have a business model whereby you will get billed for your usage. The fact that you can walk away from your machine does not necessarily mean that any processes that you may have been running in the cloud will stop. This is a very different paradigm from the days when your machine being off meant that nothing was running. At the end of each chapter that uses cloud resources...