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AZ-104 Practice Question 46: Compute Gallery Generalized Image

Microsoft Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104) · Test 5 · question 6 of 10

Computemedium

A team has built a hardened Windows Server VM with the corporate agents and configuration installed. They now need to deploy fresh VMs and scale set instances from it in three regions, keep several numbered revisions of it side by side so a bad build can be rolled back, and have each new VM come up with its own computer name and local accounts.

What should you do?

Select one answer
Show answer and explanation

Answer:

  • A. Generalize the source VM, capture it as an image version under an image definition whose OS state is Generalized in an Azure Compute Gallery, and replicate the version to the three regions

An Azure Compute Gallery is the repository designed for this: image definitions carry the metadata and OS state, and "an image version is what you use to create a VM ... You can have multiple versions of an image as needed for your environment," versioned as MajorVersion.MinorVersion.Patch with latest resolving to the newest. Replication is built in, target regions hold copies of the version, and scale sets can reference gallery images. The generalize step is what gives each new VM its own identity: "Generalizing is a process that removes machine and user specific information from the VM ... For Windows, the Sysprep tool is used."

Option B gives up versioning and management. A snapshot is a point-in-time copy of one disk that you must copy and track per region yourself, with no image definition, no latest semantics, and no first-class scale set integration.

Option C fails the identity requirement, which is the discriminator here. VMs created from a specialized image "will have the Computer name of the VM the image was taken from", and "accounts that could be used to log into the VM can also be used on any VM created using the specialized image." Faster boot is a real benefit, just not what was asked for.

Option D is the pre-gallery way of doing this and carries all the manual work: uploading, tracking VHDs per region, and no versioning. Microsoft's guidance is to bring such a VHD into a managed image and then into a gallery image definition and version.

Reference: Store and share images in an Azure Compute Gallery

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