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Managing Images

This guide covers creating, updating, and managing custom OS images through the My Images tab.

Prerequisites​

  • A running VM to use as the image source. Use a dedicated gold master VM — never create an image from a production machine, as the process powers off the source VM.

Creating a Custom Image​

There are two ways to start image creation:

  1. From the server's Tools menu — navigate to the VM under Infrastructure → Virtual Machines, select it, go to Tools, and click Build a new image.
  2. From the My Images tab — navigate to Platform → OS Images → My Images and click + Add.

Both options open the same creation form with the following fields:

  • Image Name — a name for your custom image
  • MBPKGID / Server — a dropdown of your running servers. Select the VM to use as the source.
  • Description — an optional description of the image
  • Keep SSH user directories — toggle (default: off). When disabled, the .ssh directory is removed from the image. Enable this if you want to preserve SSH keys baked into the image.

⚠️ Warning: Submitting the image request will power off the source VM. Never run this against a production machine. The recommended practice is to maintain a dedicated gold master VM for image creation.

Click Submit to start the image creation process.

After Submitting​

The portal displays a message that the image job is currently running. The image appears in the My Images table with its custom ID. Clicking the image before the job completes shows the job status.

Image creation can take up to 20 minutes depending on the image size. Once complete, the image is stored in the master system and is not immediately distributed to all locations. When you deploy the image to a location for the first time, it is automatically downloaded and cached there.

Managing Existing Images​

From the My Images tab, click the Actions menu on any image to:

  • Open sidebar — view detailed image information
  • Update image — replace the image content with a new snapshot while preserving the same image ID. This is useful when you refresh a gold master and want Terraform, Ansible, or API automation that references the image ID to continue working without changes.
  • Delete image — permanently remove the image

Selecting an Image During VM Deployment​

When deploying a new VM through Infrastructure → Virtual Machines → + Add, the OS configuration step presents image tabs:

  • Base Images — NetActuate-maintained standard images
  • Private Images — account-specific images managed by NetActuate
  • My Images — your custom images
  • ISO Install — paste a URL to install from a third-party ISO

Select an image and continue with the deployment wizard. All base images support cloud-init — you can pass an init script in the same step.

Next Steps​

Need Help?​

Contact support@netactuate.com or open a support ticket from the portal.