Simple Azure Marketplace Virtual Machine Offer: creating VM images and publishing in Partner Center

In the following four videos, we look at how to create Linux and Windows VM images using Packer.io unmanaged VHD and Azure Shared Image Gallery destinations, how to publish these images as Azure Marketplace Virtual Machine offer in Microsoft Partner Center, and how to deploy and test the “preview” offer plans/SKUs.

You can see the sample code used in the videos here.

Update: As of March 2021, Partner Center allows to publish VM offers directly from Azure Shared Image Gallery (SIG) instead of needing to generate SAS URL for the VHD file. Therefore, you may want to skip Video #1 and look at Video #2 without focusing on the part describing how to export the SIG image to VHD.

Azure Virtual Machine Offer Hierarchy — Publisher, Offer, Plan/SKU, and Version

Video #1: Creating Azure VM image for Azure Marketplace Virtual Machine Offer using Packer with “unmanaged” VHD destination

Tip: Play the video full screen to see all of the details.

Using Packer with “unmanaged” VHD destination to get the VHD SAS URL for Partner Center

Video #2: Creating Azure VM image for Azure Marketplace Virtual Machine Offer using Packer with Azure Shared Image Gallery destination

Tip: Play the video full screen to see all of the details.

Update: As of March 2021, Partner Center allows to publish VM offers directly from Azure Shared Image Gallery (SIG) instead of needing to generate SAS URL for the VHD file. Therefore, you may want to look at Video #2 without focusing on the part describing how to export the SIG image to VHD.

Using Packer with Azure Shared Image Gallery destination and then exporting the image and copying the VHD into Azure Storage account

Video #3: Publishing Azure Marketplace Virtual Machine Offer in Partner Center using SAS VHD URL

Tip: Play the video full screen to see all of the details.

Video #4: Deploying and testing “preview” Virtual Machine offer from Azure Marketplace

Tip: Play the video full screen to see all of the details.

Azure VM offer plans can used by Azure Apps

Azure Application offers (i.e. Solution Template or Managed Application) can use VM offer plan/SKU inside of their ARM templates. The VM offer plan can be marked as “hidden” so that it is not visible directly in Azure Marketplace UI but can still be used via ARM templates or command line tools.

Azure Applications like “Solution Template” and “Managed App” can use VM offers inside of their ARM templates

My other posts and videos about Azure VM offers

• Creating VHD Azure blob SAS URL from Azure Managed Image
• Using Self-Test API to validate VM images for publishing in Azure Marketplace
• Azure Marketplace API to programmatically review and accept publisher agreement/EULA
• Using Cloud Partner Portal CPP API for managing Virtual Machine offers in Azure Marketplace

You can find the sample code used in the videos above at https://github.com/arsenvlad/azure-vm-offer-hello-world-202012

Thank you!

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This article is also published at the FastTrack for Azure Technical Community Blog https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/fasttrack-for-azure/simple-azure-marketplace-virtual-machine-offer-creating-vm/ba-p/2058093