But creating and managing your own image pipeline to build those custom images means running extra infrastructure and managing extra software. Azure Image Builder offers you that as a cloud service.

Azure Image Builder builds on HashiCorp’s open source Packer image creation tool, integrating it into the Azure command line and focusing on building both Linux and Windows Azure virtual machines.

Microsoft announced Azure VM Image Builder has reached general availability, providing a managed service that reduces the complexity of manually creating virtual machines images -- with associated ...