Part 3 - Gold Image for AVD Deployment

In this blog, we will prepare our Golden image which we will use for our AVD deployment.

High-level Steps for our Golden VM

Provision and Start a VM
Install Apps
Stop VM and Snapshot the OS disk
Start VM
Perform Sysprep
Ensure VM is stopped and deallocated
Capture the VM

Creating our Golden VM

Step 1- Follow the usual process of creating an Azure VM

Step 2- Ensure the image we choose is set to Windows multi-session

Step 3- Review and create the VM

Step 4- Install apps needed on the VM eg: Firefox, Winzip

Step 5- Stop VM

Step 5- Snapshot disk and give the snapshot a name

Step 6- Start the VM and run Sysprep with Generalize and Shutdown

Step 7- Wait for the VM to finish Sysprep and once done the VM will shutdown

Step 8- Once VM is now stopped from the OS end, we will need to shutdown the VM from the Azure portal so it deallocates from the hardware blade it is on

Step 9- Our VM is now deallocated and ready for image creation

Step 10- Go to VM and choose to capture the VM

Step 11- Give the gallery a name. I’ve chosen the option to delete the VM post the capture as it’s no longer required and we can easily create a new VM from the snapshot.

Step 12- Give the VM Image defnintion a name

Step 13- Give the version number as some value and under replica we choose “1” because we don’t need that image to be replicated to multiple AZs. Choose the disk type as needed – SSD will be better for IOPS.