Image management is fundamental to Horizon desktop and server entitlements. This documentation page introduces the Horizon Image Management Service. This page also describes requirements specific to using Horizon Image Management Service.

You use this service to create, customize, and publish image versions for desktop and server entitlements across your cloud-managed edge deployments.

The Horizon work flow depends upon the prompt administration of the system images. The system images power up the virtual machines, which provision entitlements to end users. To manage system images, every image customization needs the administrator to add and publish new versions of an image, and update the associated entitlements individually.

Horizon Image Management Service simplifies and streamlines this process by offering the following features and benefits across your cloud-managed edge deployments.

  • Centralized image catalogs, listing the images with their versions and copies across edges.
  • Easy-to-use guided steps to publish an image.
  • Entitlements on different cloud-connected edges and sites, which can easily and consistently use the same image version managed by the image service.
  • Simplified image versioning to control and track customizations.

Important Terminology

To understand image management, you need to know the terms like image, version, and copy. An image broadly categorizes the Operating System and the Virtual Machine Model. Each version under this image is a numbered version that is designed for different sets of software on the image and is in the format major.minor.patch . A copy of each image version is a concrete instance for each edge. For example, an image named Game can have a version 1.1.0 in the format major.minor.patch and an image copy Game 1.1.0 on various edges like Edge-1, Edge-2, Edge-3, and so on.

Once an image version and its copies are created, they are treated as unchangeable. If any more changes are needed, they must be made on the minor or major versions, if the content is distinct from the source image.

Requirements and Considerations Specific to Using Horizon Image Management Service with Deployments of Horizon Edge in Microsoft Azure

This section describes requirements and considerations to be aware of as you use Horizon Image Management Service with deployments involving Horizon Edge in Microsoft Azure.

For overall Horizon Edge deployment requirements, see

For the Horizon Image Management Service operations to work successfully and be supported with your deployments, those deployments must adhere to the following requirements

If your deployments do not continue to meet these requirements, unexpected results might occur and the image management operations might fail. The publishing operation is especially sensitive to these requirements.

Microsoft Azure quota requirements
Your Microsoft Azure subscriptions must have enough quota for the VM models you plan to select for image management operations. For the recommended model types to use for the image base VM, see the requirements checklist's Image Management System Requirements section.
Service principal requirements
As described in Create a Service Principal for the Microsoft Azure Subscription, the service uses API calls to work with resources in your Microsoft Azure subscriptions. To have successful operations, for as long as the service principals are registered for use with VMware Horizon Cloud Service - next-gen, you must ensure that they:
  • Continue to meet the requirements described in that page.
  • Are not expired and do not reach their expiration date.
  • Remain in the Azure Portal and are not deleted.
Known limitations of Horizon Image Management Service
Service known limitations are described in the Known Limitations section of the VMware Horizon Cloud Service - next-gen Release Notes. Look for the Images section there.

For example, such limitations might include scenarios and use cases that are currently unsupported.

Known issues of Horizon Image Management Service
Service known issues are described in the Known Issues section of the VMware Horizon Cloud Service - next-gen Release Notes.