Hello, I'm seeking information about using machine profiles for Azure-based catalogs. I can see from the documentation you can point to a virtual machine or a template spec to configure things like Accelerated networking, boot diagnostics, etc. I also see that the documentation shows how to create the template spec from an existing virtual machine. I think I'm leaning on creating a template spec but I can't find documentation on what can/should be configured in the template spec. I'd like to create a "minimal" template spec. My concern is if you point the machine profile at a template spec created from a virtual machine or at a virtual machine you may end up with extra or unexpected configurations. Maybe I'm overthinking it.

Maybe overthinking a little :-) mcs only honors what it uses in those specs / profiles anyhow

Yes, my friend, I’m overthinking it. Ultimately, we want to create a Win11 catalog with hibernation. So, I know we need hibernation, trusted launch, and tpm enabled via the template spec. What other things might we look at setting in the machine profile that we can’t also enable in the catalog wizard?

Better to overthink than underthink brother. Outside of your notes above, Tags (used to handle this with policies) and disk caching settings spring to mind, I think there was also some considerations around certain encryption types used - but there were so many combination of those, my brain can't compute them all. @Yuhua Lu is there a defined list of supported/checked settings for Machine Profiles that Brandon can reference outside of what is currently in the docs?

There is definitely some uncertainty about what you can do with a machine profile and this being a cloud service, why aren't these native options in the catalog wizard?

oh that is a fun one, my understanding on that one is that the catalog is only enabled for hibernation if you use an ARM spec or Machine Profile during initial creation that has the Hibernation property set. But, you can retro fit an existing catalog that does not have the value set via PowerShell - this is not MCS specific, but for general power management of existing machines. That's how I understand it anyhoo

that's how I understand it too, having a healthy disagreement between coworkers on this one.

destroy them all

is there a defined list of supported/checked settings for Machine Profiles that Brandon can reference outside of what is currently in the docs?

Good question, James and Brandon. Before machine profile, we added Azure feature by using custom property and post machine profile, even though we don't need new custom property, we still test before claim support. Overall, idea of machine profile is that we will transparently import VM properties from master VM or ARM template spec, and then use these properties to create VM. This way, if Azure introduce new property, it will be automatically working without us making any code change. For example, when Azure introduced Encryption at host, it automatically worked with machine profile, we just verified it is working.

@Yuhua Lu thanks for taking the time!

@Yuhua Lu, yes thank you!

You are more than welcome! Keep question and recommendation coming 🙂