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⏱️ 3 min read (497 words)
I found it a little challenging understanding how to obtain the SKU details required to deploy a Virtual Machine using Bicep
The Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines resource requires a few properties related to the image/sku of the machine.
imageReference: {
publisher: '?'
offer: '?'
sku: ?
version: 'latest'
}
To obtain these properties some Powershell is required. The examples given in the offical Microsoft documentation weren’t particularly helpful in my opinion.
In this example I’m going to look for a Microsoft Windows 10 image.
First of all we need to obtain a list of publishers. In this case we want to look for the publisher Microsoft.
Get-AzVMImagePublisher -location uksouth | where {$_.publishername -like "*microsoft*"}
PublisherName Location
------------- --------
Microsoft.Windows.RemoteDesktop uksouth
Microsoft.Azure.WorkloadInsights.Windows.ReleasePipeTest.INT uksouth
SentinelOne.WindowsExtension uksouth
Microsoft.Azure.Security.TestWindowsAttestation uksouth
Microsoft.Azure.Security.WindowsCodeIntegrity uksouth
Dans.Windows.App uksouth
Chef.Bootstrap.WindowsAzure uksouth
Dans3.Windows.App uksouth
Microsoft.VisualStudio.WindowsAzure.DevTest uksouth
Microsoft.Azure.WindowsFabric.Test uksouth
SentinelOne.WindowsExtension.Test uksouth
Microsoft.WindowsAdminCenter uksouth
Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Compute.test uksouth
Microsoft.WindowsAdminCenter.Test uksouth
Microsoft.Windows.Azure.Extensions uksouth
Microsoft.VisualStudio.WindowsAzure.RemoteDebug uksouth
This returns a lot of random publishers that don’t really look like what we’re after. Let’s try search for Windows instead.
Get-AzVMImagePublisher -location uksouth | where {$_.publishername -like "*windows*"}
PublisherName Location
------------- --------
Microsoft.Windows.RemoteDesktop uksouth
Microsoft.Azure.WorkloadInsights.Windows.ReleasePipeTest.INT uksouth
SentinelOne.WindowsExtension uksouth
Microsoft.Azure.Security.TestWindowsAttestation uksouth
Microsoft.Azure.Security.WindowsCodeIntegrity uksouth
Dans.Windows.App uksouth
Chef.Bootstrap.WindowsAzure uksouth
Dans3.Windows.App uksouth
Microsoft.VisualStudio.WindowsAzure.DevTest uksouth
Microsoft.Azure.WindowsFabric.Test uksouth
SentinelOne.WindowsExtension.Test uksouth
Microsoft.WindowsAdminCenter uksouth
Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Compute.test uksouth
Microsoft.WindowsAdminCenter.Test uksouth
Microsoft.Windows.Azure.Extensions uksouth
Microsoft.VisualStudio.WindowsAzure.RemoteDebug uksouth
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
Microsoft.Azure.WorkloadInsights.Windows.ReleasePipeTest.TEST uksouth
Qualys.WindowsAgent.GrayLabel uksouth
MicrosoftWindowsServerHPCPack uksouth
Microsoft.VisualStudio.WindowsAzure.Test.RemoteDebug uksouth
MicrosoftWindowsServer uksouth
Microsoft.VisualStudio.WindowsAzure.DevTest.Test uksouth
Ah! That’s more like it. We can see a publisher called “MicrosoftWindowsDesktop”
MicrosoftWindowsDesktop and MicrosoftWindowsServer are commonly used.
Okay so we have the Publisher now. Next we need to find the offer. To do this we need to use the Publisher name.
Get-AzVMImageOffer -Location uksouth -PublisherName "MicrosoftWindowsDesktop"
Offer PublisherName Location
----- ------------- --------
test_sj_win_client MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
windows-10-1607-vhd-client-prod-stage MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
windows-10-1803-vhd-client-prod-stage MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
windows-10-1809-vhd-client-office-prod-stage MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
windows-10-1809-vhd-client-prod-stage MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
windows-10-1903-vhd-client-office-prod-stage MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
windows-10-1903-vhd-client-prod-stage MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
windows-10-1909-vhd-client-office-prod-stage MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
windows-10-1909-vhd-client-prod-stage MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
windows-10-2004-vhd-client-office-prod-stage MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
windows-10-2004-vhd-client-prod-stage MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
windows-10-20h2-vhd-client-office-prod-stage MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
windows-10-20h2-vhd-client-prod-stage MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
windows-10-ppe MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
windows-11 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
windows-7 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
windows-7-0-sp1-vhd-client-prod-stage MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
windows-ent-cpc MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
windows-evd MicrosoftWindowsDesktop uksouth
Looking at the list we want just Windows 10. So Windows-10 looks like the correct one to try.
Next we need to obtain the SKU.
Get-AzVMImageSku -PublisherName "MicrosoftWindowsDesktop" -offer "Windows-10" -Location uksouth
Skus Offer PublisherName
---- ----- -------------
21h1-pro-g2 Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
21h1-pro-zh-cn Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
21h1-pro-zh-cn-g2 Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
21h1-pron Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
21h1-pron-g2 Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
win10-21h2-pro-zh-cn-g2 Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
win10-21h2-pron Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
win10-21h2-pron-g2 Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
win10-22h2-avd Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
win10-22h2-avd-g2 Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
win10-22h2-ent Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
win10-22h2-ent-g2 Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
win10-22h2-entn Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
win10-22h2-entn-g2 Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
win10-22h2-pro Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
win10-22h2-pro-g2 Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
win10-22h2-pro-zh-cn Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
win10-22h2-pro-zh-cn-g2 Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
win10-22h2-pron Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
win10-22h2-pron-g2 Windows-10 MicrosoftWindowsDesktop
I have removed quite a few from the output here as the list is quite long. But let’s select the win10-22h2-pro
So now we have all the details we need.
imageReference: {
publisher: 'MicrosoftWindowsDesktop'
offer: 'Windows-10'
sku: 'win10-22h2-pro'
version: 'latest'
}
Hopefully this guide helps you search for Virtual Machine SKUs.
Health ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
See you soon!