Hi Sophia
it is possible to use your own azure image; but there are several steps that need performing manually to make it workable in Horizon Cloud Service.
The Auto-Import functionality is really the simplest option, as it takes a very recent (patched) version of Windows and then applies the necessary configuration to make it work.
If however you wish to use your own image however, then here are the high level steps you'd follow;
(see the documentation for much more detail on this)
- you start with an azure created vm running a supported OS. (we dont currently support you uploading arbitrary images from outside of azure.)
- place this image in a specific resource group so that the azure node can 'see' the vm
- Ensure that the RDS role is enabled (this requires the vm to be domain join) - this is needed for RDS farms (desktop or application based)
- Install the Horizon7 agent (this has to be done after the RDS role is enabled)
- install the DaaS agent
- install (optionally) the UEM agent and the NVIDIA drivers (if you are using a NV6 machine)
- configure the daas agent, to communicate with the Azure Node (needs node's IP address)
- 'pair' the agent with the node by downloading the bootstrap file, and registering that in the vm.
- reboot the vm
at this stage the vm should go 'Active' in the imported vm's page of the administration ui, and from there can be 'converted to an image' and then used in a farm as normal.
The auto-import functionality takes care of all of the above (with exception currently of installing uem and nvidia agents, but this is something we are looking to enhance soon.)
The documentation does a really good job to walk through the above steps in more detail, so do go and check that out, see Manually Build the Master Virtual Machine in Microsoft Azure for the html guide (similar section in the pdf version: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Horizon-Cloud-Service/services/horizon-cloud-14-admin.pdf )
hope this helps,
peterb
