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Yandex Compute Cloud
  • Getting started
    • Overview
    • Creating a Linux VM
    • Creating a Windows VM
    • Creating instance groups
  • Step-by-step instructions
    • All instructions
    • Creating VMs
      • Creating a Linux VM
      • Creating a Windows VM
      • Creating a VM from a set of disks
      • Create a VM with disks restored from snapshots
      • Creating a VM from a custom image
      • Creating a preemptible VM
      • Creating a VM with a GPU
    • DSVM
      • Overview
      • Creating a VM from a public DSVM image
    • Placement groups
      • Creating a placement group
      • Deleting a placement group
      • Creating a VM instance in a placement group
      • Adding a VM to a placement group
      • Removing a VM instance from a placement group
    • Images with pre-installed software
      • Creating a VM from a public image
      • Configuring software
      • Working with a VM based on a public image
      • Getting a list of public images
    • Getting information about a VM
      • Getting information about a VM
      • Viewing serial port output
    • Managing VMs
      • Stopping and starting a VM
      • Attaching a disk to a VM
      • Detaching a disk from a VM
      • Moving a VM to a different availability zone
      • Making a VM's public IP address static
      • Updating a VM
      • Changing VM computing resources
      • Deleting a VM
    • Working on VMs
      • Connecting to a VM via SSH
      • Connecting to a VM via RDP
      • Working with Yandex.Cloud from inside a VM
      • Installing NVIDIA drivers
    • Creating new disks
      • Creating an empty disk
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      • Creating a disk snapshot
      • Updating a disk
      • Deleting a disk
      • Deleting a disk snapshot
    • Creating new images
      • Uploading your image
    • Managing images
      • Deleting a disk image
    • Managing the serial console
      • Getting started
      • Connecting to a serial console via SSH
      • Connecting to a serial console via CLI
      • Start your terminal in the Windows SAC
      • Disabling access to the serial console
    • Creating instance groups
      • Creating a fixed-size instance group
      • Creating a fixed-size instance group with a load balancer
      • Creating an automatically scaled instance group
      • Creating an instance group from Container Optimized Image
    • Getting information about instance groups
      • Getting a list of groups
      • Getting information about a group
      • Getting a list of instances in a group
    • Managing instance groups
      • Update a group
      • Configure application health check on the VM
      • Update a group
        • Incremental update
        • Updating without downtime
      • Stop a group
      • Start a group
      • Delete a group
    • Dedicated hosts
      • Creating a VM in a group of dedicated hosts
      • Creating a VM on a dedicated host
  • Yandex Container Optimized Solutions
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    • Configuring NTP time synchronization
    • Running instance groups with auto scaling
  • Concepts
    • Relationship between resources
    • Virtual machines
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      • Overview
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      • Overview
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        • Overview
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        • Overview
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  • Pricing policy
    • Current pricing policy
    • Archive
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  • Compute API reference
    • Authentication in the API
    • gRPC
      • Overview
      • DiskPlacementGroupService
      • DiskService
      • DiskTypeService
      • HostGroupService
      • HostTypeService
      • ImageService
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      • Overview
      • Disk
        • Overview
        • create
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        • listOperations
        • update
      • DiskPlacementGroup
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        • create
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        • get
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        • restart
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        • update
        • updateMetadata
        • updateNetworkInterface
      • PlacementGroup
        • Overview
        • create
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        • list
        • listInstances
        • listOperations
        • update
      • Snapshot
        • Overview
        • create
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        • listOperations
        • update
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        • get
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        • Overview
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        • listOperations
  • Questions and answers
    • General questions
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    • All questions on the same page
  1. Concepts
  2. Images

Images

  • Image family
  • Public images

An image is a complete copy of the file system structure and data on a disk.

It is designed to quickly create a data disk, primarily a VM's boot disk. Images can be used for distributing software, such as OS distributions or disks with pre-installed software.

Tip

To regularly back up your data on disks, use snapshots.

You can create an image from a disk, snapshot, or other image. If you have an image, you can import it to Yandex.Cloud. You can't import Windows boot disk images.

When you create a Windows boot disk image, indicate this in the operating system type. This is important for proper CPU emulation and billing.

Image family

If you regularly update your images, you can group them into families. You can use the family name to find the latest image in the family.

Warning

All images belonging to the same family must be in the same folder.

Let's say you want to upload an image of your operating system to Yandex.Cloud. When creating an image, specify a family, like best-linux-distro. This lets other users get the latest version of your operating system by specifying the family and image folder ID in the query.

Public images

You can grant public access to your image by assigning the compute.images.user role to the allAuthenticatedUsers system group. Then other Yandex.Cloud users will be able to use your image to create their own disks and VMs. However, the compute.images.user role doesn't grant permission to delete or edit your image.

An example of public images are OS distributions provided by Yandex.Cloud.

In this article:
  • Image family
  • Public images
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