Reference Machine

A reference machine is a Windows 11 Pro virtual machine that serves as the template for your golden image. It contains the operating system, applications, settings, and configurations you want deployed to every target machine.

Instead of manually setting up each machine from scratch, you configure everything once in the reference machine. iiDeploy then captures this into a golden image that gets deployed consistently to all your target machines.

Why a VM?

Using a virtual machine as your reference machine gives you:

• Isolation — changes in the VM do not affect your host machine
• Snapshots — save the VM state and roll back if needed
• Repeatability — start fresh or from snapshots whenever you want
• No extra hardware — no need for a dedicated physical machine

The next pages walk through creating the VM, configuring Windows, and capturing the golden image.