Image retention policy

Our image retention policy depends on the type of Ubuntu image, we publish two types:

  • release images - fully tested, production grade images that benefit from Canonical’s in-life support

  • daily images - untested builds that contain all the latest updates from the Ubuntu archive

For more details about these image types, check out our documentation of image release types.

On Azure, release and daily images for a given Ubuntu release are published under two distinct offers. To avoid confusion, only release images of Ubuntu are displayed on the Azure Marketplace and daily images are ‘hidden’.

To find the daily images, use the Azure CLI and run:

az vm image list -p Canonical --offer 'daily' --all

Retention policies

The images published on Azure are not retained forever. Whenever possible, it is safer to use the latest tag while selecting images. For example, use Canonical:0001-com-ubuntu-server-jammy:22_04-lts-gen2:latest instead of Canonical:0001-com-ubuntu-server-jammy:22_04-lts-gen2:22.04.202311010.

There are different retention policies for release and daily images:

release images

The retention policy for release images depends on the status of the plan:

  • Active release plans. The last 20 release image versions per plan/SKU are retained. No image version less than six months old will be removed, ensuring recent builds remain available regardless of the 20-image threshold.

  • Plans past standard maintenance. For SKUs under plans that no longer receive active image updates (such as free public plans for releases that have transitioned out of their standard five-year window), only a single, final image version is retained.

For example, the image described by the URN Canonical:0001-com-ubuntu-server-jammy:22_04-lts-arm64:22.04.202206220 will be available until 20 newer images have been published under the Canonical:0001-com-ubuntu-server-jammy:22_04-lts-arm64 plan, or until the image is more than six months old (whichever comes later).

daily images

Since the daily images are only meant for testing, 10 images per plan/SKU are kept alive.