Debian 11 LVM
by cloudimg
An LVM root you can grow online; bullseye is past free LTS, at its final archive state.
End of free security support - read this first
Debian 11, codenamed bullseye, left free Debian LTS on 31 August 2026. This image is patched to the FINAL FREE ARCHIVE STATE for that release: every package Debian's own hosts still publish for bullseye was applied at build time and the image was captured with zero pending upgrades. Continued security coverage for bullseye exists only through Extended LTS (ELTS), a PAID subscription from Freexian whose packages are not redistributable - so this image contains no ELTS package, no ELTS repository and no ELTS key. That is verified rather than asserted: every repository on the image reports origin Debian, and every installed package version is one those repositories still offer. If your workload needs ongoing fixes you can buy a subscription from Freexian yourself and add their repository after deployment. Choose this image when your estate is standardised on Debian 11 and you need the LVM layout underneath it; for a fresh deployment with no Debian 11 constraint, choose a release still inside its free support window.
Debian 11 with an LVM root layout
This image differs from the standard Debian 11 image in one deliberate way: the disk layout. The root filesystem lives on an LVM logical volume (volume group debian-vg, logical volume root, ext4 - the same naming the Debian installer's own guided LVM option produces) on a GPT disk with an EFI system partition and a dedicated /boot partition. The full LVM toolchain ships in the image; the package set is otherwise the standard one.
Grow the root online - the reason to choose this image
Deploy on an OS disk larger than the shipped 30 GiB and claim the extra space on the running system with growpart, pvresize, lvextend and an online ext4 resize - no reboot, no unmount, no downtime. The deployment guide demonstrates the exact chain with real output from this exact image, and documents one behaviour worth knowing up front: nothing on this image auto-grows an LVM root, so the space stays under your control until you claim it - into the root volume, or into new volumes for data, logs or applications.
A working package source on a retired release
The stock Debian 11 image for Azure points apt at a regional Azure mirror that still serves bullseye indexes but has pruned its package pool, so apt can see updates and install none of them. This image replaces those sources with Debian's own hosts and prevents the Azure agent hook from silently putting them back, so a fresh VM keeps a working apt. The guide shows the one-line change to make when bullseye completes its move to archive.debian.org.
Secure by default
No credential is baked into the image: the root password is locked, password authentication is disabled and root password login is prohibited, so access is only ever by the SSH key you supply when you create the VM. The machine identity and SSH host keys are regenerated uniquely on every instance. AppArmor is enforcing, the only advertised inbound port is SSH on 22 - the only service listening off the machine at all - and no swap is baked into the OS disk.
What you get from cloudimg
- Root on LVM (debian-vg/root) with a proven, documented online grow procedure
- A Debian 11 base patched to the final free-archive state, with no Extended LTS content
- Repaired apt sources so the machine keeps a usable package source
- A deployment guide tested block-by-block against this exact image
- 24/7 expert support from cloudimg
Licensing
Debian is free and open source. It is not a single licence but a collection of independently licensed open-source packages (GPL, LGPL, MIT, BSD, Apache-2.0 and more), all from Debian's DFSG-free main component. No subscription, no licence key and no support contract is required. Debian is produced by the Debian Project; Freexian is an independent vendor named only to identify the Extended LTS subscription. cloudimg is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Debian Project, Software in the Public Interest, Inc. or Freexian. The cloudimg charge ($0.04 per vCPU/hour) covers packaging, security patching, image maintenance and 24/7 support.