Learn about Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Insights image builders

Creating “golden images” of an operating system (OS) is a popular and recommended practice for deploying new systems to any environment; from your data center to the public cloud. They ensure rapid deployments that are maintainable and conform to your unique Standard Operating Environment (SOE) requirements. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) provides two options to help you easily build customized RHEL OS images: RHEL image builder and Insights image builder.

What is RHEL image builder?

RHEL image builder is a feature that enables you to assemble customized operating system images for consistent provisioning and deployment across all environments, including physical systems, virtual machines, clouds, and more. This feature is a part of RHEL and can be installed on-premises. It includes both a Command Line Interface (CLI) as well as a graphical user interface within the RHEL web console. Additional instructions and documentation can be found in Composing a customized RHEL system image.

What is Insights image builder?

Red Hat Insights image builder is a hosted service implementation of the RHEL image builder located under Inventory->Images in Insights for RHEL of the Hybrid Cloud Console. Note that you can also enable Preview mode at the top to test new, pre-release functionality.

Insights image builder shares most of the same code base and functionality as the RHEL image builder. It provides a ready to use experience with no need to install your own dedicated build node. Additional instructions and documentation can be found in Deploying and managing RHEL systems in hybrid clouds.

Optimize RHEL for the open-hybrid enterprise

Included in your RHEL subscription, both RHEL and Insights image builders make it easy to consistently and repeatedly assemble RHEL optimized for the target platform. By default, it creates an equivalent of a “Minimal Install”, and includes any necessary packages as appropriate for the image type. You can also specify additional packages that you’d like to include in the image. More details of what is installed by default for each image type can be found in Chapter 4.9. Packages installed by RHEL image builder. You can also easily apply complex configurations such as industry standard security compliance profiles or include your own scripts to be run at initial startup.

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INTERACTIVE LABS

• Building custom images with Insights image builder hosted service [Insights image builder]
• Using Web Console to build virtual machine images [RHEL image builder]
• Design and build virtual machine images using commandline tools [RHEL image builder]

LATEST BLOG POSTS

Save, edit, and share blueprints in Insights image builder
August 21, 2024 - Terry Bowling

Insights image builder has recently added blueprints, which allow you to create, save, and edit revisions over time. A blueprint provides a declarative definition of how to assemble RHEL... read full post

Customize RHEL images with RHEL system roles and Insights image builder
August 14, 2024 - Brian Smith

Insights image builder recently added a first boot script configuration option to customize instances at launch. Learn how this feature allows you to execute Ansible playbooks containing RHEL system roles to apply many useful configurations... read full post

Using RHEL as a WSL podman machine
August 1, 2024 - Jeff Maury

Recently, Image Builder added WSL as a target, enabling you to run RHEL on Windows as a WSL distribution.... read full post

Add first boot scripts to golden images with Red Hat Insights image builder
July 22, 2024 - Terry Bowling

Insights image builder has recently added the first boot script configuration feature to embed scripts in the image that are run when an instance first starts up. This enables you to run your scripts to do any variety of custom tasks... read full post

How RHEL image builder complements your existing workflow
May 16, 2024 - Alessandro Rossi

With Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Insights, a feature that can support this process comes out of the box: image builder. In this article, we will go through the core capabilities and demonstrate how easy it is to start building the first image from scratch... read full post

Getting started with RHEL on WSL
December 21, 2023 - Nikhil Mungale

In this article, we'll explore the steps to get started with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) on Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2), enabling developers to work seamlessly with Windows and Linux environments... read full post

Create customized RHEL images for the WSL2 environment
November 15, 2023 - Eliane Pereira Sanne Raymaekers

Red Hat Insights image builder enables you to create an image suitable for Windows Subsystem Linux (WSL) so that you can run a Linux environment directly on your Windows machine. You can find the required prerequisites by... read full post

Build and launch Red Hat Enterprise Linux images in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
September 21, 2023 - Terry Bowling

Red Hat is pleased to announce additional capabilities and support to easily build and launch Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). This is one of m... read full post

Building security certifications into your image builder blueprint
July 18, 2023 - Eric Hendricks, Terry Bowling

Enterprises are rapidly adopting hybrid and multicloud infrastructure strategies, and Red Hat is making it easier for them to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as their applicati... read full post

Using hosted image builder via its API
August 2, 2022 - Ondřej Budai

Image builder is a new hosted Red Hat service for building customized cloud images. In this blog post, we show you how to use it from the command line.... read full post

Announcing full support for new Red Hat Enterprise Linux image builder service
May 10, 2022 - Terry Bowling

Red Hat is pleased to announce that the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) image builder service is now fully supported with your RHEL subscription.... read full post

Using the no-cost Developer Subscription with the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux Image Builder hosted service
January 17, 2022 - Terry Bowling

Red Hat recently published "Introducing the hosted beta experience Red Hat Enterprise Linux Image Builder," hosted service as part of the Insights application suite. As a followup to t... read full post

IMAGE BUILDER VIDEOS

Deploying RHEL playlist @RedHatEnterpriseLinux channel

Dive into the essentials of deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux with this focused playlist. Whether you're setting up RHEL 8 or RHEL 9, these videos provide clear, step-by-step tutorials tailored for IT professionals and sysadmins. Learn everything from basic installation to pushing RHEL images to boost your efficiency and mastery of RHEL deployments.