Alibaba Cloud allows you to create custom images from existing Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances or snapshots or import custom images from your on-premises devices. You can use a custom image to create instances that have the same configurations. This eliminates the need for repeated configurations. This topic describes how to use a custom image and the operations that you can perform on custom images.
Use a custom image
After you create or import a custom image, the image is in the Available state. You can use the image to create instances, share the image to other Alibaba Cloud accounts, copy the image to other regions, or export the image to an Object Storage Service (OSS) bucket. You can also delete the image when you no longer need the image.
Only the creator of a custom image can use, share, copy, and delete the image.
The following figure shows how to use a custom image.
Operations
The following table describes the operations that you can perform on custom images.
Operation | Description | References |
Create an image | You can create a custom image from an instance or a snapshot to copy the system environment. This eliminates the need for repeated configurations. | |
Import an image | You can import images from your on-premises device or from other cloud service providers to Alibaba Cloud to generate custom images. | |
Update an image | You can use CloudOps Orchestration Service (OOS) to update a custom image to update the software and configurations of an ECS instance that uses the custom image. | |
Copy an image | You can copy images to deploy ECS instances across regions or change the encryption status of encrypted and unencrypted images in the same region or across regions. | |
Share an image | You can share a custom image that you created to other Alibaba Cloud accounts. The Alibaba Cloud accounts can create instances from the image that you shared. | |
Export an image | You can export a custom image that you created to an OSS bucket and then download the image to your on-premises device. | |
Modify image information | To facilitate custom image management, you can change the name, description, Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) drive settings, and boot mode of a custom image based on your business requirements. | |
Delete an image | You can delete a custom image that you no longer need. |
Automated custom image creation
If you want to update custom images on a regular basis, you can follow the best practices for automatically creating custom images by using Image Builder, OOS, or Packer. This eliminates the need for manual orchestration. For more information, see Automatically create custom images.