Use shared galleries to share Azure images

[mudler]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
A way to use packer templates and cOS vanilla images from Azure easily with already published images. The implementation in #341 requires the user to manually import a vhda disk into Azure

Describe the solution you'd like
Find if we can use shared image gallery in Azure to share the cOS vanilla images with the world, and if we can do that easily, add it to our CI

Additional context

• Build Azure images with Packer #341 (comment)
• https://www.packer.io/docs/builders/azure/arm#shared_image_gallery
• https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/azure-docs/blob/master/articles/virtual-machines/windows/capture-image-resource.md
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/shared-image-galleries#generalized-and-specialized-images
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/generalize

Action items

• Find if we can use shared image gallery in Azure to share the cOS vanilla images with the world
• Add the process to our CI and adapt packer templates as necessary
• Offer a way to use directly our images in the packer templates, and/or update our docs on how to find the image in the shared gallery, or via az CLI

[Itxaka]

FYI, when I tried to used the shared gallery method as source with packer I found some issues:

==> azure-arm.cos: Code="DeploymentFailed" Message="At least one resource deployment operation failed. Please list deployment operations for details. Please see https://aka.ms/DeployOperations for usage details." Details=[{"code":"BadRequest","message":"{\r\n  \"error\": {\r\n    \"code\": \"InvalidParameter\",\r\n    \"message\": \"Parameter 'osProfile' is not allowed.\",\r\n    \"target\": \"osProfile\"\r\n  }\r\n}"}]

So we may need to fix this upstream

[Itxaka]

ahh got it, its because the image is specialized:

Message: Parameter 'osProfile' is not allowed.
Cause: Admin username, password, or SSH keys were provided for a VM that was created from a specialized image version.
Workaround: Don't include the admin username, password, or SSH keys if you intend to create a VM from that image. Otherwise, use a generalized image version and supply the admin username, password, or SSH keys.

[Itxaka]

BTW @mudler @dragonchaser should we put this in front of the docs? Im currently doing the docs, but the packer templates are not working due to the shared image galley.

should we fix this first? So the packer templates are working and we show how to use the shared image gallery or should we just drop teh shared image galley as a source and instead change the templates to use a manually build image based of the docs on build_raw_images.md ??

[Itxaka]

Thing is, there is also the possibility of having the target image being a shared image as well as part of the packer process...will we want this as derivatives may want to publish their images? (we kind of do this on aws...)

[mudler]

I would leave the shared galleries and the shared images story specifically to this card, also because that would involve also publishing Azure images as well, which I don't think it's something we should address right now - but it's fantastic to know how to do it and leave the door open in case we want to publish them.

[Itxaka]

In that case I need to revert the shared image gallery and just use plain images, which we already have info on how to create and upload to azure in the docs.