[Download The Official Windows 10 20H1 ISO Images
Laurice Whack
Traditionally, Windows 10 and Windows Server have always included a set of .NET native binaries that were pre-compiled using the Native Image Generator tool (Ngen.exe). This native pre-compilation makes these binaries faster on default installations of the OS, but it also makes the image size grow: managed/IL .NET binaries are typically smaller and slower initially (until JIT compilation happens) than their native counterparts (with another tradeoff being that the latter are not portable between platforms and architectures).
If you depend on Windows Server container images for usage of Windows PowerShell, and you value performance, you should switch from the windows/servercore images to the dotnet/framework/runtime images. The latter are specifically optimized for .NET Framework workloads like Windows PowerShell.
And in fact, switching to the new dotnet/framework/runtime images will actually provide a greater benefit to startup performance even over the old windows/servercore images. When running Measure-Command docker run --rm powershell -c "echo 1" on a Windows box, observe the following differences:
Organization are evaluating how to build Master Images for WVD. One of the options available is through the AIB DevOps Task which provides a high level of automation, repeatability and integration with Azure, which is where the WVD Service lives!
Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session (Win10ms), formerly known as Windows 10 Enterprise for Virtual Desktops (EVD), is a new Remote Desktop Session Host that allows multiple concurrent interactive sessions. Win10ms is available in the Azure Marketplace, used to build pooled Sessions Hosts in a Hostpool for Windows Virtual Desktops (WVD).
These WVD pooled Session hosts are Virtual Machines in Azure and need to be created from a Win10ms Image. Within the Marketplace standard Win10ms images are available but most organizations require customized images including configuration settings and software such as FSLogix for profile management and Microsoft Teams optimized for WVD.
Keeping these Session Hosts up to date can be a challenge as feature updates are not supported for Win10ms in Azure. Also considering multiple users potentially are connected to the same VM, installing updates could be disruptive as well.
Although System Center Endpoint Manager and Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) today are used in many organizations, these technologies are not fully optimized and integrated with Azure. In the case of SCCM, Win10ms Market Place Images would need to be copied locally and back to Azure resulting in additional and often manual activities. Additionally, the Win10ms Image for most organizations should require relatively less configuration and optimization as the Marketplace Win10ms image is already optimized for WVD from the Marketplace. From an application perspective, with the capability to support MSIX, App-Attach soon, these images should also not require having many applications installed.
To overcome these challenges Azure Image Builder (AIB) can be used. AIB is developed for Azure to assist with the automated creation of Managed Images in Azure. As WVD is a PaaS in Azure these services have full integration.
For large organizations and enterprises, key criteria for an Image Build process includes version control, reporting, requirements management, project management, automated builds, lab management, testing and release management capabilities. Azure DevOps can be used to address these requirements by creating a WVD Win10ms Build Release Pipeline in Azure DevOps.
This document provides guidance on how to setup and use WVD Win10ms Build Release Pipeline to achieve a repeatable and controlled process (DevOps) for automating Win10ms builds (AIB) and versioning and replicating those Images to the locations/Azure Regions where they are needed (Shared Image Gallery).
This post will provide guidance on how to setup a DevOps Pipeline for a Win10ms build. Note that this document is not intended to explain all the aspects of Azure, PowerShell, and DevOps. Some basic knowledge on these topics is assumed to be successful.
The WVD Image requires to be customized through a customization script and potentially additional software is required. A repository needs to be created to store the customization script and potentially other content. Additionally, the customization script requires to be maintained with version control etc.
In Azure DevOps, Repos are used to manage your code and, in our example, the AIB Customization Powershell Script. You can connect your favorite development environment to Azure Repos to access your repos and manage the code. The code can be shared using:
The Repository can be in any Azure DevOps supported repository. In our case we will use a standard Azure DevOps repository to host our PowerShell customization script used in the AID DevOps task but alternatively you could also use your GitHub repository. If a GitHub repository will be used the steps in this paragraph can be skipped.
A Git Repo is not intended to store for example application Packages or other packages with large size (Artifacts in Azure DevOps are free up till 2Gb). An alternative solution to store large packages is in Azure File Share storage which should be made accessible during the build. AIB supports the usage of existing VNETs that can be used.
In Azure DevOps-specific terms, a pipeline is a sequence of steps on your code, in our example we can look at the code as the Custimization Powershell. A build is a pipeline that has no side-effects, it only takes in code and puts out compiled "artifacts". A release is a pipeline that has side-effects, it takes in artifacts and publishes or deploys them to environments.
The latter is more aligned with an Image build workflow, where we are building a Managed Image to be released as a Managed Image, potentially in a Shared Image Gallery, to be deployed in Azure and used in our different environments (dev, test, prod).
The Image Builder Task needs to be configured to your requirements. The Pipeline with the AIB task provides a way to create a repeatable process to create updated images in an automated way from a managed and versioned repository.
Note: Alternatively you can decide not to select a resource group where you allow this service connection to have access to all Resource Groups within the subscription. This might be useful when you like to re-use this connection for other purposes.
Note: When the build starts, Image Builder will create a container called 'imagebuilder-vststask', this is where the build artifacts from the repo are stored. You need to manually delete the storage account or container after each build!!!
You can override the VM size, from the default of Standard_D1_v2. You may do this to reduce total customization time, or because you want to create the images that depend on certain VM sizes, such as GPU / HPC etc.
Note: This Resource Group including the storage account will be deleted after the Image has been created. If you want to read the logs you will need to do it during the build and distribution of the Image.
@Roel SchellensThis is great but my org requires tags be created on new objects in Azure. How can I do this using your method? It's failing during the packer section creating the template since it's missing the required Azure tags.
@Hoppy_Shaw you can add any tags needed on the json image template, refer How it works point 1 on -us/azure/virtual-machines/linux/image-builder-overview?toc=/azure/virt... you can also find some templates here
Since yesterday (11/08/2020) and today, the windows update part of the Azure VM Image Builder DevOps Task no longer works. Getting this error: PACKER ERR error initializing provisioner 'windows-update': Incompatible API version with PACKER ERR plugin. Plugin version: 4, Ours: 5
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