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My Images

My Images allows you to create and manage custom images — snapshots of configured VMs that can be redeployed to any NetActuate PoP. This is useful for standardizing deployments, pre-installing software, or maintaining a known-good configuration that can be rolled out quickly.

Image Limits​

The default limit is 2 custom images per account. Contact support to have this limit increased.

Creating an Image​

There are two ways to create a custom image:

  1. From a VM'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.

Fill in the image name, select the source server from the dropdown, add an optional description, and choose whether to keep SSH user directories (default: off, which removes the .ssh directory).

⚠️ Warning: Image creation powers off the source VM. Use a dedicated gold master VM — never create images from production machines.

After submitting, the image job runs for up to 20 minutes. The image is initially stored in the master system and cached to other locations on first deployment.

Deploying a Custom Image​

When deploying a new VM, select the My Images tab in the OS configuration step. Choose your image — it will be available at any PoP. The first deployment to a new location downloads and caches the image there; subsequent deployments at that PoP use the cached copy.

Updating an Image​

Use the Update image action from the My Images table to replace an image's content while preserving the same image ID. This is the recommended workflow when refreshing a gold master:

  1. Make changes to a running VM based on the existing image.
  2. From the My Images table, click Actions → Update image on the existing image.
  3. Select the updated VM as the new source.

The image ID stays the same after the update, so API calls, Terraform configurations, and Ansible playbooks referencing the original image ID continue to work without changes.

My Images vs Private Images​

These are separate concepts:

  • My Images — customer-managed. You create, update, and deploy them yourself.
  • Private Images — managed by NetActuate. These are images associated with your account by NetActuate for custom, support, or licensing reasons.

Need Help?​

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