The detailed examination of virtual machines focuses on the process of creating, configuring, and provisioning virtual machines using cloud service providers like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform. It highlights how to set up an EC2 instance with necessary resources such as network access, security groups, and storage using Pulumi, a modern infrastructure as code tool. The example provided demonstrates configuring security groups for SSH and HTTP/HTTPS access, selecting Amazon Machine Images (AMI), and attaching Elastic Block Storage (EBS). Additionally, the text discusses the use of Pulumi's dynamic providers to provision existing instances by executing custom scripts during deployment, specifically illustrating the installation and configuration of PostgreSQL on an EC2 instance. The process involves copying configuration files via SCP and running commands to set up the database, all orchestrated through a series of dependent commands to ensure the correct deployment sequence. The article concludes with a promise of exploring serverless infrastructure deployment in a subsequent discussion.