Find Azure Windows 10 Virtual Machine Image details: Publisher, Offer and SKU

How to find Azure Windows 10 Image details: Publisher, Offer, SKU and Version for creating Virtual Machines using Azure CLI.

Quickstart

To deploy a Windows virtual machine using Azure CLI, we first need to find the Publisher, Offer, SKU and Version of the VM image.

Image Uniform Resource Name (URN)

• Combine the values for Publisher, Offer, SKU, and version together to get the image Uniform Resource Name (URN).
  
• You can just use "latest" instead of specifying the image version.

Example URN: Windows 10 Enterprise 21H1 latest version
Publisher: MicrosoftWindowsDesktop, Offer: Windows-10, SKU: 21h1-ent, Version: latest
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-ent:latest

Example URN: Windows 10 Pro 21H1 OS build 19043.1469
Publisher: MicrosoftWindowsDesktop, Offer: Windows-10, SKU: 21h1-pro, Version: 19043.1469.220116
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-pro:19043.1469.220116

Windows 10 image SKU names

• pro Windows 10 Pro
  
• ent Windows 10 Enterprise
• g2 Generation 2 virtual machine
• n N Edition available in Europe does not have Windows media player installed
• entn Windows 10 Enterprise N Edition
• evd Windows 10 multi-session (Enterprise virtual desktop)
• pron Windows 10 pro N Edition
• zh-cn Chinese language pack

For the lazy admins... you just want a list of Windows 10 images that you can use with Azure CLI, right?

# Example: Windows 10 Enterprise 21H1
# define variables for location, publisher, offer and sku
Location=ukwest
Publisher=MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
Offer="Windows-10"
Sku="21h1-ent"

# list vm image versions for a sku
az vm image list --all -l $Location -p $Publisher -f $Offer -s $Sku --output table

# Windows 10 Enterprise 21H1 URNs
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-ent:latest
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-ent:latest
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-ent-g2:latest
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-ent-g2:latest
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-entn:latest
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-entn:latest
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-entn-g2:latest
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-entn-g2:latest

# Example: Windows 10 Pro 21H1
# define variables for location, publisher, offer and sku
Location=ukwest
Publisher=MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
Offer="Windows-10"
Sku="21h1-pro"

# list vm image versions for a sku
az vm image list --all -l $Location -p $Publisher -f $Offer -s $Sku --output table

# Windows 10 Pro 21H1 URNs
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-pro:latest
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-pro:latest
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-pro-g2:latest
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-pro-g2:latest
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-pro-zh-cn:latest
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-pro-zh-cn:latest
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-pro-zh-cn-g2:latest
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-pro-zh-cn-g2:latest
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-pron:latest
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-pron:latest
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-pron-g2:latest
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-pron-g2:latest 

Azure Marketplace image terminology

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/linux/cli-ps-findimage

A Marketplace image in Azure has the following attributes:

• Publisher: The organization that created the image. Examples: Canonical, MicrosoftWindowsServer
• Offer: The name of a group of related images created by a publisher. Examples: UbuntuServer, WindowsServer
• SKU: An instance of an offer, such as a major release of a distribution. Examples: 18.04-LTS, 2019-Datacenter
• Version: The version number of an image SKU.  

Image Uniform Resource Name (URN) 

The VM image Uniform Resource Name (URN) is a combination of publisher, offer, sku and version and is used to specify the Windows image when creating VMs using Azure CLI.

In this guide, we will go through the steps to find the Publisher, Offer, SKU and Version for Windows 10, which will give us the URN we need to use to create Windows VM using Azure CLI.

Example: Windows 10 Enterprise 21H1 URN

publisher:offer:sku:version

MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-ent:19043.1469.220116

List VM Image Publishers for Microsoft Windows

# define variable for location 
Location=ukwest

# list all available publishers for an Azure region 
az vm image list-publishers -l $Location --output table

# list publishers starting with MicrosoftWindows
az vm image list-publishers -l $Location --query "[?starts_with(name, 'MicrosoftWindows')]" --output table
 

List VM Image Offers for Windows Desktop

# define variable for location and publisher
Location=ukwest
Publisher=MicrosoftWindowsDesktop

# list vm image offers for publisher
az vm image list-offers -l $Location -p $Publisher --output table
 

List VM Image SKUs for Windows 10

# define variables for location, publisher and offer
Location=ukwest
Publisher=MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
Offer=Windows-10

# list vm image skus for an offer
az vm image list-skus -l $Location -p $Publisher -f $Offer --output table 

What do the different Windows 10 image SKU names mean?

• pro Windows 10 Pro
• ent Windows 10 Enterprise
• g2 Generation 2 virtual machine
• n N Edition available in Europe does not have Windows media player installed
• entn Windows 10 Enterprise N Edition
• evd Windows 10 multi-session (Enterprise virtual desktop)
• pron Windows 10 pro N Edition
• zh-cn Chinese language pack

# list vm image skus starting with 21h1
az vm image list-skus -l $Location -p $Publisher -f $Offer --query "[?starts_with(name, '21h1')]" --output table
 

List VM image versions for Windows 10

# define variables for location, publisher, offer and sku
Location=ukwest
Publisher=MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
Offer="Windows-10"
Sku="21h1-ent"

# list vm image versions for a sku
az vm image list --all -l $Location -p $Publisher -f $Offer -s $Sku --output table
 

Windows 10 Image URN

Combine the values for Publisher, Offer, SKU, and version together to get the image URN.

Example URN: Windows 10 Enterprise 21H1 latest version

MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-ent:latest

Example URN: Windows 10 Pro 21H1 OS build 19043.1469

MicrosoftWindowsDesktop:Windows-10:21h1-pro:19043.1469.220116

Reference:

Azure CLI az vm image list
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/vm/image?view=azure-cli-latest#az-vm-image-list

by Author