Understanding and Managing Azure Image Reference

An Azure image reference is a unique identifier for an Azure virtual machine image. It's used to create and manage virtual machines in Azure.

Azure image references are used to track the source and version of an image. This allows you to easily identify and manage different versions of the same image.

You can use Azure image references to create multiple virtual machines from the same image. This is useful for deploying multiple instances of the same application or service.

Azure image references are also used to manage updates and patches for your virtual machines. By tracking the source and version of an image, you can ensure that all your virtual machines are running the latest updates.

Worth a look: Manage Azure

An Azure image reference is a unique identifier for an image in the Azure Marketplace, consisting of the publisher, offer, SKU, and version.

The publisher is the organization that created the image, such as Canonical or RedHat.

An offer is a group of related images created by a publisher, like 0001-com-ubuntu-server-jammy or RHEL.

A SKU is an instance of an offer, representing a major release of a distribution, like 22_04-lts-gen2 or 8-lvm-gen2.

The version is the version number of an image SKU, which can be replaced with "latest" to use the latest version of the image.

You can pass these values individually or as an image URN, combining them with colons, for example: Publisher:Offer:Sku:Version.

Here's a breakdown of the values in an image URN:

To deploy an image, you can use the Azure CLI to pass the URN for --image, along with the purchase plan parameters if necessary.

To create a new VM, you can deploy an image using its parameters. You can pass the URN for the image to the --image flag.

The image you choose may have purchase plan parameters, which you'll need to provide along with the URN. This is the case for images like RabbitMQ Certified by Bitnami.

Before deploying, you may be prompted to accept the terms of the image. To do this, run az vm image terms accept and verify that the output shows "accepted": true.

To get details about a VM image available in the Azure Marketplace, use the az vm image show command. This will give you information about the image's sku and version.

Managing Azure VMs is a crucial part of cloud computing, and understanding how to manage them efficiently can save you a lot of time and money.

You can get the details for a VM image available in the Azure Marketplace using the az vm image show command. This command is a great way to learn more about the images available in the marketplace.

The az vm image show command can retrieve the image sku, which is a unique identifier for the image. This is useful for referencing the image in other Azure commands.

You can also use the az vm image show command to get the version of the image sku. This is helpful for keeping track of updates and changes to the image.

Using the az vm image show command is a straightforward way to manage your Azure VMs and get the information you need to keep your cloud infrastructure running smoothly.

You can see all the images available to you by running az vm image list --all, but be prepared to wait several minutes for the entire list to produce.

The az vm image list command without the --all option is a faster way to see a list of popular VM images in the Azure Marketplace.

Running this command displays a cached list of popular images in table format, including the image URN.

You can also see the UrnAlias for each image, if available, which is a shortened version created for popular images like Ubuntu2204.

If you omit the --all option, you can see the UrnAlias for each image, if available.

To get the details for a VM image available in the Azure Marketplace, use the az vm image show command.

The az vm image show command retrieves the image sku and its version.

This command is useful for getting specific details about a VM image.