Best approach for small-environment WVD image management?

Iron Contributor

Goal: Provide a WVD environment for 5 users with the potential to scale up to 50 users. I need a production environment plus a way to prepare an updated image that can be pushed into production.

My understanding is that I should use the Shared Image Gallery.

 

How should I create the image(s) that get added to the gallery? Should I start by creating a resource via https://portal.azure.com/#create/hub, or by creating an image via https://portal.azure.com/#create/Microsoft.Image?

 

From https://portal.azure.com/#create/hub, I can search the Marketplace for "Windows 10 multi-session + Microsoft 365 Apps." This brings me to a "Create a virtual machine" wizard. This seems to be the process recommended for creating an image that will be imported into the SIG in this blog post: https://www.robinhobo.com/windows-virtual-desktop-wvd-image-management-how-to-manage-and-deploy-cust.../.

The process for creating an image at https://portal.azure.com/#create/Microsoft.Image looks completely different.

 

If I go to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/set-up-customize-master-image, it says "We recommend you use an image from the Azure Image Gallery ... Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session is available in the Azure Image Gallery. There are two options for customizing this image. The first option is to provision a virtual machine (VM) in Azure by following the instructions in Create a VM from a managed image, and then skip ahead to Software preparation and installation." That is the option I want to use; the second option requires local image creation, and I want to do this entirely through the portal.

 

So the first step in the first option has a link to instructions for "Create a VM from a managed image" (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/create-vm-generalized-managed). Those instructions are from 2018 and don't make any reference to WVD, so it's hard to know exactly what to do when creating an image for use with WVD. It just says "select the image you want to use from the list" of images. But at https://portal.azure.com/#create/Microsoft.Image, I don't see any image selection option.

 

There is a "Learn More" link from the image creation page at https://portal.azure.com/#create/Microsoft.Image-ARM. The link takes you to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/capture-image-resource, which appears in the VM documentation immediately before https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/create-vm-generalized-managed. In that first article, titled "Create a managed image of a generalized VM in Azure," it suggests creating the managed image by first creating a VM and then capturing that VM to create an image. That sounds like I would start by creating the VM at https://portal.azure.com/#create/hub instead of creating an image at https://portal.azure.com/#create/Microsoft.Image.

 

It feels like the documentation keeps pushing me back and forth between these two approaches. Help appreciated!

 

 

2 Replies

@patrick-h Ha! See my comment from January 8 on an even more relevant post from the same author: Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) – Image Management : How to manage and deploy custom images (including...

 

I can't tell if the process he describes is now considered "old school" by Microsoft and if the concept of creating images directly is the now preferred method, or if Robin's process is still just fine. Seems like they are rolling out new functionality to Azure much faster than they can document it.