VM Images and Disks

Question

Hi,

What is the difference between Images and Disks menus under Virtual Machines section?

https://manage.windowsazure.com/#Workspaces/VirtualMachineExtension/vms

Thank you

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Martin Kulov
www.kulov.net

Microsoft Regional Director
VS ALM MVP, MCT, MCSD, MCPD, INETA Speaker

Answer 1

Hi,

you can find the help Icon in the same window at the right bottom corner.Click it and it explains you everything about each componenents.

For example Help on Disks Gives me the following details :

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I hope it helps!! If you found this post useful, Please "Mark as answer" or "Vote as Helpful". Thanks! VIJAY.

Answer 2

An Image is essentally a template for a machine.  YOu can use the ones provided by msft, create and upload your own, or create one from a disk.

A disk, is like a physical disk.  Each Virtual Machine has at least one disk (the os disk) and can have additional disks for storing data.  The number of disks varies based on the size of the vm, but they all can have at least one more attached data disk.  You cannot use the same disk with multiple VMs.  The best workaround I have found is by sharing the disk in a virtual network, or using some sort of DAV server to actually share the disk (thats how we do it to share the disk between linux / windows located on different cloud services).

If you delete a Virtual Machine its disk wills still stay in your account unless if you delete that through a seperate and 2nd action.  This means you can delete a vm, but create it again from the disk it was using.  This is similar to an image, but with the following differences:
1. the disk can only be used to create one single vm
2. the disk is not syspreped meaning that azure will not create new users / passwords.

What has worked for us so far is to configure our own custom images.  We start with those provided by microsoft, fine tuning them with the settings and software we need.  Once we get them far enough we turn off the vm, and use the image menu in the portal to create a new image.  What sucks is at the point the Virtual machine is lost and needs to be re-created.   Whats nice is that if we mess anything up we dont have to start from scratch.   To do this you have to system prep your system.   Micorosft has a tutorial for that for both linux and windows.