Tutorial: Create and use a custom image for Virtual Machine Scale Sets with the Azure CLI

When you create a scale set, you specify an image to be used when the VM instances are deployed. To reduce the number of tasks after VM instances are deployed, you can use a custom VM image. This custom VM image includes any required application installs or configurations. Any VM instances created in the scale set use the custom VM image and are ready to serve your application traffic. In this tutorial you learn how to:

If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a trial account before you begin.

Prerequisites

• If you prefer to run CLI reference commands locally, install the Azure CLI. If you're running on Windows or macOS, consider running Azure CLI in a Docker container. For more information, see How to run the Azure CLI in a Docker container.

  • If you're using a local installation, sign in to the Azure CLI by using the az login command. To finish the authentication process, follow the steps displayed in your terminal. For other sign-in options, see Sign in with the Azure CLI.

  • When you're prompted, install the Azure CLI extension on first use. For more information about extensions, see Use extensions with the Azure CLI.

  • Run az version to find the version and dependent libraries that are installed. To upgrade to the latest version, run az upgrade.

• This article requires version 2.4.0 or later of the Azure CLI.

Overview

An Azure Compute Gallery simplifies custom image sharing across your organization. Custom images are like marketplace images, but you create them yourself. Custom images can be used to bootstrap configurations such as preloading applications, application configurations, and other OS configurations.

The Azure Compute Gallery lets you share your custom VM images with others. Choose which images you want to share, which regions you want to make them available in, and who you want to share them with.

Create and configure a source VM

First, create a resource group with az group create, then create a VM with az vm create. This VM is then used as the source for the image. The following example creates a VM named myVM in the resource group named myResourceGroup:

az group create --name myResourceGroup --location chinanorth2

az vm create \
  --resource-group myResourceGroup \
  --name myVM \
  --image <SKU image> \
  --admin-username azureuser \
  --generate-ssh-keys

Create an image gallery

An image gallery is the primary resource used for enabling image sharing.

Allowed characters for Gallery name are uppercase or lowercase letters, digits, dots, and periods. The gallery name cannot contain dashes. Gallery names must be unique within your subscription.

Create an image gallery using az sig create. The following example creates a resource group named gallery named myGalleryRG in China North 2, and a gallery named myGallery.

az group create --name myGalleryRG --location chinanorth2
az sig create --resource-group myGalleryRG --gallery-name myGallery

Create an image definition

Image definitions create a logical grouping for images. They are used to manage information about the image versions that are created within them.

Image definition names can be made up of uppercase or lowercase letters, digits, dots, dashes, and periods.

Make sure your image definition is the right type. If you have generalized the VM (using Sysprep for Windows, or waagent -deprovision for Linux) then you should create a generalized image definition using --os-state generalized. If you want to use the VM without removing existing user accounts, create a specialized image definition using --os-state specialized.

For more information about the values you can specify for an image definition, see Image definitions.

Create an image definition in the gallery using az sig image-definition create.

In this example, the image definition is named myImageDefinition, and is for a specialized Linux OS image. To create a definition for images using a Windows OS, use --os-type Windows.

az sig image-definition create \
   --resource-group myGalleryRG \
   --gallery-name myGallery \
   --gallery-image-definition myImageDefinition \
   --publisher myPublisher \
   --offer myOffer \
   --sku mySKU \
   --os-type Linux \
   --os-state specialized

Create the image version

Create an image version from the VM using az image gallery create-image-version.

Allowed characters for image version are numbers and periods. Numbers must be within the range of a 32-bit integer. Format: MajorVersion.MinorVersion.Patch.

In this example, the version of our image is 1.0.0 and we are going to create 1 replica in the China North region and 1 replica in the China North 2 region. The replication regions must include the region the source VM is located.

Replace the value of --managed-image in this example with the ID of your VM from the previous step.

az sig image-version create \
   --resource-group myGalleryRG \
   --gallery-name myGallery \
   --gallery-image-definition myImageDefinition \
   --gallery-image-version 1.0.0 \
   --target-regions "chinanorth2=1" "chinanorth=1" \
   --managed-image "/subscriptions/<Subscription ID>/resourceGroups/MyResourceGroup/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/myVM"

Create a scale set from the image

Create a scale set from the specialized image using az vmss create.

Create the scale set using az vmss create using the --specialized parameter to indicate the image is a specialized image.

Use the image definition ID for --image to create the scale set instances from the latest version of the image that is available. You can also create the scale set instances from a specific version by supplying the image version ID for --image.

Create a scale set named myScaleSet the latest version of the myImageDefinition image we created earlier.

az group create --name myResourceGroup --location chinanorth2
az vmss create \
   --resource-group myResourceGroup \
   --name myScaleSet \
   --orchestration-mode flexible \
   --image "/subscriptions/<Subscription ID>/resourceGroups/myGalleryRG/providers/Microsoft.Compute/galleries/myGallery/images/myImageDefinition" \
   --specialized

It takes a few minutes to create and configure all the scale set resources and VMs.

Share the gallery

You can share images across subscriptions using Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC). You can share images at the gallery, image definition or image version. Any user that has read permissions to an image version, even across subscriptions, will be able to deploy a VM using the image version.

We recommend that you share with other users at the gallery level. To get the object ID of your gallery, use az sig show.

az sig show \
   --resource-group myGalleryRG \
   --gallery-name myGallery \
   --query id

Use the object ID as a scope, along with an email address and az role assignment create to give a user access to the shared image gallery. Replace <email-address> and <gallery iD> with your own information.

az role assignment create \
   --role "Reader" \
   --assignee <email address> \
   --scope <gallery ID>

For more information about how to share resources using Azure RBAC, see Add or remove Azure role assignments using Azure CLI.

Clean up resources

To remove your scale set and additional resources, delete the resource group and all its resources with az group delete. The --no-wait parameter returns control to the prompt without waiting for the operation to complete. The --yes parameter confirms that you wish to delete the resources without an additional prompt to do so.

az group delete --name myResourceGroup --no-wait --yes

Next steps

In this tutorial, you learned how to create and use a custom VM image for your scale sets with the Azure CLI:

Advance to the next tutorial to learn how to deploy applications to your scale set.