Understanding Cloud Images

A virtual machine image (“image”) is a single file that contains a virtual disk that contains a bootable operating system.

Images come in several formats. The Rackspace Managed Cloud uses images in the Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) format. The VHD format was developed by Microsoft and is used by the Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer hypervisors, among others.

See also

Image properties Data immutability On-demand images Importing and exporting images Scheduled images Creating custom images from servers Creating cloud servers from base images: Default base image configurations Base images life cycle Patching base images

Sharing images: Managing shared images Models of sharing images Planning to share or use shared images Preparing to share images Image-sharing roles Getting support for shared images

Understanding Cloud Images introduces key ideas. To learn how to put these ideas to work, start at Actions for Cloud Images.