AN OVERVIEW OF AZURE COMPUTE GALLERY FUNCTIONS AND USES
Published: 2023-06-19 17:18:57

**This article makes a review of Azure Compute Gallery, its components, functions, uses, and how to get the best out of it.**

**WHAT IS AZURE COMPUTE GALLERY?**

Azure Compute Gallery is a service that helps you build structure and organization around your Azure resources, like images and applications. 

It provides global replication, versioning and grouping of resources for easier management1. You can use Azure Compute Gallery to share custom VM images and application packages with others in your organization, within or across regions, within a tenant.
An Azure Compute Gallery helps you build structure and organization around your Azure resources, like images and applications. 

**USES OF AZURE COMPUTE GALLERY**

**An Azure Compute Gallery provides framework for:**

- 
Global replication.

- 
Versioning and grouping of resources for easier management.

- 
Highly available resources with Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS) accounts in regions that support Availability Zones. ZRS offers better resilience against zonal failures.

- 
Premium storage support (Premium_LRS).

- 
Sharing to the community, across subscriptions, and between Active Directory (AD) tenants.

- 
Scaling your deployments with resource replicas in each region.

Let take a look at how to create and use **Azure Compute Gallery**.

**HOW TO CREATE AZURE COMPUTE GALLERY**

- 
Sign into your **Azure portal** at https://portal.azure.com

- 
Go to the search bar at the top of the page, type and select Azure compute gallery.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ezw5fmh4q0tof3lm05jt.PNG)

Under **Basics** and under **Project details**, select your **Subscription** and **Resource group**.

Under Instance details, select your gallery name and region. Then a little description about the gallery if you so wish.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/stlmwl3rfypabq3xcyvk.PNG)

Select the radio button **Yes** for **Share image to Azure compute gallery**.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/lgqdcwrq545h0tq05qvm.PNG)

When you get the notification **Validation passed** click on the **Create** button. 

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/gxvgu86ahl7khvofqxek.PNG)

Overview of the **Compute Gallery**.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/hwa7dg8bfko23tll22zs.PNG)


**CAPTURING AND SAVING A VM IMAGE IN THE COMPUTE GALLERY**

Now that the Compute Gallery is ready for use, let go ahead and capture and image of a virtual machine to save in it.

- Go to **All recourses** and click on the machine you want to capture the image to reveal the **overview** page.

- Click on the Capture button at the top of the page.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/zffct9pr9hphqhgra39t.PNG)

This will take you to **Create an image** page. On this page, your **Subscription** and **Region** are already provided from the configuration of the VM. You enter the **Resource group** if it is different from the one you used for creating the VM.

- 
Then click on **Review + create** button.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/j32ex9y2jzzk9d8s28p3.PNG)
 
When you see the notification **Validation passed**
Click **Create** button.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/2xb4fpehxi6kecq9u827.PNG)

This will take you to **Create an image** page.
Under **Gallery details**, enter your Compute gallery as the target, select **Operating system state**. Select **Specialized** as the operating system state, if you still want the VM to remain functional after capturing the image.

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Then click on **Create new** under **Target VM image definition** and enter the image specifications and click of in the new tab. 

- 
Then enter **version number** and **Number of replicas** and **Regions** to replicate the image.

- Then click on the **Review + create** button.

- 
Leave other configurations as default and click on **Review + create** button to procced.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/i7zouggmm84dvmddv2zl.PNG)

The image of the VM is now successfully captured and saved in the Compute gallery. You can go and view the image in the gallery. 

- Click on the gallery, then on the image to see the image **overview **.
![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/w960734zf46v8yviytq5.PNG)

You can create a VM from this image by clicking on the button **Create VM**.