Community images are publicly available. Custom images can be published as community images for other users to obtain and use.
Introduction
The process related to managing a community image involves the following three parties.

- Alibaba Cloud: provides the platform where community images are published and managed by vendors.
- Vendor: provides custom images and publishes them as community images.
- Image user: uses community images.
Operations
The following table describes the operations supported by community images.
Operation | Description | References |
---|---|---|
Publish a community image | You can publish a custom image that is in the Available state as a community image. | Publish a community image |
Search for a community image | You can search for a specific community image by specifying the name, ID, or owner ID of the community image. Then, you can use the community image to create Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances. | Search for a community image |
Use a community image | You can use a community image to quickly deploy ECS instances whose operating systems, applications, and data suit your business needs. | Use a community image |
Unpublish a community image | You can unpublish a published community image when you want to update or stop maintaining the image. | Unpublish a community image |