Online Gallery Support Coming to Hyper-V Quick Create

Microsoft introduced Hyper-V Quick Create — the one-page virtual machine creation wizard — back in January. But hidden away in recent Insider builds are bits tied to an upcoming addition called Online Gallery.

Online Gallery, as the name suggests, connects to one or more virtual disk image galleries on the web and presents starting images for you to choose from. It fits right in with the Hyper-V Quick Create ethos: You select an image, click Create Virtual Machine, and you’re done.

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It’s that easy.

Presumably Microsoft’s official gallery will collate images scattered around on the Internet, such as the ones built for Microsoft Edge and Windows 10 development. But the official gallery isn’t available yet, so I disassembled the app and figured out how to create my own.

Behind the curtain, an Online Gallery is simply a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) file hosted on a web server. This file contains one or more images and any associated metadata like name, publisher, version, virtual disk location, etc. It’s normally hosted by Microsoft, for obvious security reasons, but you can override this behavior and self-host your own Online Gallery.

To point the app to your gallery, define a REG_MULTI_SZ called GalleryLocations at HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Virtualization containing at least one URL pointing to your JSON file. (You can later, for example, push this change down to client machines in an Active Directory forest.) The app will automatically look for images at the new location next time it’s started.

You can grab my sample gallery from GitHub and use it as a starting point if you wish. (Just note that the SHA-256 hashes are required.)

If you create any cool galleries, share them below and we’ll give them a whirl!

(Free idea: A gallery with recent Windows Insider images would be extremely handy.)

Update (1/10/2018): Microsoft has documented some of this in a Technet blog post. Be sure to check that out.

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Conversation 7 comments

  • Spineless

    01 July, 2017 - 9:09 pm

    <p>One could easily say… "It's about time"</p>

  • Bart

    Premium Member
    02 July, 2017 - 7:47 am

    <p>"……..<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent;">so I disassembled the app and figured out how to create my own."</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent;">As one does #wizzkid </span></p>

  • chrisrut

    Premium Member
    03 July, 2017 - 10:25 am

    <p>And kudos on upping your programming chops. :-)</p>

  • JaviAl

    Premium Member
    03 July, 2017 - 12:57 pm

    <p>A new mobile app on the desktop.</p>

  • Luka Pribanić

    08 July, 2017 - 9:33 am

    <p>Trully, something that could havr and should have been done way before … I'd be so happy to have an internal VM image repository, and just click and create a new VM like this. And then have images for Server 2008, 2012, 216, Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, whatnot…</p>

  • AprilRussell

    06 October, 2017 - 12:01 am

    <p><span style="background-color: rgb(245, 245, 245); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">"……..</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">so I disassembled the app and figured out how to create my own.".</span></p><p><span style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">– </span><a href="http://survivalgames.me&quot; target="_blank">survival games</a></p>

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    06 April, 2018 - 8:24 am

    <p>If you need money, take a look at this page: <a href="https://siloans.com/same-day-personal-loans.html&quot; target="_blank">siloans</a> Here you will find all the information you need to take out a loan.</p>

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