In this article I wanted to touch on custom images for Azure Local. I have worked alot with Azure Virtual Desktop where images are a vital part of sucessful deployments. So how about Azure Local? Can we deploy custom images? The answer is YES – and there are so many ways to do it!

Lets explore the options:

• Create Azure Local VM image using Azure Compute Gallery images
  • This would be nice if it could deploy directly from Compute gallery to Azure Local repo, but the proces involves exporting the disk from the image definition from the compute gallery and copy to Azure Local repo for images. (All of this can be automated with Azure DevOps, Bicep and Powershell)
• Create Azure Local VM image using image in Azure Storage account
  • If you already have spend time deploying images to storage accounts, you can leverage this feature.
• Create Azure Local VM image using images in a local share
  • No matter how you start, the result will be an image deployed to a repo on your Azure Local repo. So if you have prepared gen2 VHDX (must have had secure boot enabled), you can simply copy the VHDX file to the repo on Azure Local and point to it. This is sometime useful if you have an existing complex image build proces that have share as target.
• Create Azure Local VM image using existing Azure Local VMs enabled by Azure Arc
  • This feature is very cool in my opinion. You deploy and customize a virtual machine running on Azure Local. I have not tested it yet, but the lack of sysprep as pre-requisites leads me to believe that the deployment uses Azure Arc to deploy sysprep extension to the VM before copy of the disk to Azure Local repo.

It all depends on the situation, but my favorite method would be to use Azure Compute Gallery. the reason behind this is the fact that I can then use Azure Custom Image Builder to maintain an automated and updated image solution. Using Azure DevOps I can then build my automation scripts and schedule it to run every week or so. It is not a 3-click configuration, but this setup is very useful then working with Azure Virtual Desktop on Azure Local where frequent image refresh is needed.

Guides

Below you can follow the links to read more about how to deploy images to Azure Local using Custom Image Builder and Compute Gallery:

Azure Local – Custom Images – Compute Gallery and Image Builder

Azure Local – Custom Images – Deploy VM from compute gallery