AZ-900 Describe Azure architecture and services Practice Question
Which Azure service provides a virtual machine image repository for sharing custom VM images across an organization?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse Azure Compute Gallery (for VM images) with Azure Container Registry (for container images), as both involve 'images' but for fundamentally different virtualization technologies.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Azure Compute Gallery
Azure Compute Gallery (formerly Shared Image Gallery) is the correct service because it is specifically designed to store, manage, and share custom VM images across subscriptions, tenants, and regions within an organization. It supports both Windows and Linux images, allows versioning, and enables replication to multiple regions for consistent deployment.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Azure Container Registry
Why it's wrong here
Azure Container Registry is wrong because it stores and manages Docker container images—immutable packages containing an application and its dependencies that run in a container runtime—not VM images. VM images, which Azure Compute Gallery stores, include an operating system boot disk and are used to provision virtual machines, not containers. These are fundamentally different virtualization and packaging models; ACR cannot store VM images or VM application packages.
- ✓
Azure Compute Gallery
Why this is correct
Azure Compute Gallery (formerly Shared Image Gallery) is the correct service because it's built specifically to store, version, and manage custom VM images and VM applications. It supports replication to multiple Azure regions for regional resilience and lets you share images across subscriptions and tenants using RBAC. Unlike the other options, it's designed for private internal sharing of VM images, not for code packages, containers, or public marketplace offerings.
- ✗
Azure Artifacts
Why it's wrong here
Azure Artifacts is wrong because it's a package management solution for storing build artifacts such as NuGet, npm, Maven, and Python packages—not VM images or virtual machine application packages. Its purpose is dependency management and sharing reusable code libraries among development teams. Compute Gallery, in contrast, deals with complete VM images that contain an operating system, applications, and configuration, not fine-grained code packages.
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Azure Marketplace
Why it's wrong here
Azure Marketplace is wrong because it's a public catalog for publishing and consuming images and solutions from external vendors—not for sharing private custom VM images within your own organization. While marketplace images can be used to create VMs, they're either publicly available or limited to specific offers you don't control for internal distribution. Compute Gallery enables you to privately manage and share your own custom images, with fine-grained RBAC and replication, which Marketplace doesn't offer.
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