> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.macstadium.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# OCI container images for Orka VMs

> Deploy Orka VMs using OCI-compatible images from public or private registries. Store, version, and distribute macOS images through standard container workflows.

Starting with Orka 3.0.0, you can work with OCI-compatible images. You can deploy a VM using a compatible image straight from a private or public registry, and you can store your images in your own registry.

## Benefits

OCI-compatible Orka images provide the following benefits:

* The official vanilla macOS images, maintained by MacStadium, are now publicly available at [https://github.com/macstadium/orka-images](https://github.com/macstadium/orka-images).
* You can maintain your own images separately from the Orka cluster, saving storage space in the process.
* You can maintain versions of your OCI-compatible images.
* Deployments using OCI-compatible Orka images are generally faster because of improved caching and storage utilization.

## Workflow

Working with OCI-compatible Orka images usually consists of these steps:

1. Set up the credentials for the image registry in the namespace where you will be deploying VMs.
   * If you are using one of the official images, maintained by MacStadium, you can skip this step.
2. Deploy a VM by specifying the path to the image. Use the VM in your workloads.
3. Preserve any changes made to the VM by saving a new image locally or pushing a version of the image to an OCI-compatible registry.
   * If you are using one of the official images, maintained by MacStadium, you can preserve your changes by saving a new image locally or pushing to your own private registry.

## Known limitations

* You cannot work with OCI images in the Orka Web UI.
* You cannot store multiple credentials for the same registry in the same namespace.
* You cannot store your registry credentials on the cluster level - you need to store them individually per namespace.
* You cannot push changes to the official images, maintained by MacStadium.
* Only cluster administrators can manage the registry credentials.


## Related topics

- [OCI Registry Integration](/orka/orka3-cli-reference/oci-registry-integration.md)
- [Deploy Orka VMs from an OCI image registry](/orka/oci-images/oci-images-deploy-vms.md)
- [Orka compatibility matrix for macOS and hardware](/orka/orka-overview/compatibility-matrix.md)
- [Orka on AWS architecture and deployment overview](/orka/orka-on-aws-and-on-prem/orka-on-aws-getting-started.md)
- [Using Harbor OCI Storage with the Orka CLI](/orka/oci-images/using-harbor-oci-storage-with-the-orka-cli.md)


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