Installing SmartDeploy onto a cloud-hosted virtual machine, such as those offered by Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure, has not been tested, and we cannot guarantee that you will successfully be able to perform console-initiated operations from a console host installed in such an environment.
Anecdotally, some users have reported using a cloud-based VM console host without issue, especially if they are performing deployments with a Cloud connection only, because this means that the console host and clients do not need to communicate directly with each other (each merely needs to be able to make a secure connection to api.smartdeploy.com via the Internet).
Other users have reported issues which have proven difficult to reproduce and mitigate. The difficulty of using such VMs (apart from the practical limitations, like being unable to create USB media) is that their networking and VM configuration, while user-configurable, are operated by a third-party and are consequently difficult to meaningfully troubleshoot for both users and SmartDeploy Support.
You may install the SmartDeploy console onto a cloud-based VM - the installer will not prevent this - but if you experience any issues with console-initiated operations, SmartDeploy Support may direct you to switch to an on-prem computer instead.
