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Windows VM Configuration

The following steps describe the procedure required in order to properly configure and access Windows instances:

  • STEP 1 : Check the Network Configuration (DHCP TYPE)

    Determine whether there is a DHCP server active on your network. The DHCP server is needed for configuring Windows instances manually. Please refer to Step 4 for further details.

  • STEP 2 : Press CTRL-ALT-DEL to connect to the VM through the console.

    Click on the windows created instance , select console and press Ctrl+Alt+Del to connect to the VM as shown in the following image.

    Connect Windows VM from console

  • STEP 3: Connect using the following credentials:

For Windows 2012 the following is enabled: 

    Username: administrator
    Password: pass123

you SHOULD IMMEDIATELY change this to a secure password

For Windows 2016 the password for user administrator must be reset as soon as you connect via the VNC console.

Please follow the procedure:

Right click on START button and click Computer Management

Windows 2016 START

Navigate to Local Users and Groups , On Users choose the administrator account from right panel,
Press right click and choose set password

Windows 2016 USER GROUPS

Press proceed

Windows 2016 USER GROUPS 2 

Set the new password to a secure password that you can remember and click ok

Windows 2016 USER GROUPS 2

At this stage you have a secure password for the administrator user

  • STEP 4: Set IP for static network configuration:

    In case the physical network interfaces - NIC0/NIC 1 have been configured as external and there is an active DHCP server connected to the Network, please ignore this step and proceed to step 5. If the physical interface is configured as static, some additional Windows Network configurations have to be performed manually, as described below:

    • Select the Networks tab , check and note the Gateway IP address as it is highlighted in the next image

    Windows Gateway

    For instance in this case the Gateway IP address is : 69.168.226.1

    • Select the Instances tab, check the windows instance that was created and note the displayed instance's IP address , as it is indicated on the following next image.

    Windows instance IP address

    In this case the Instance IP is : 69.168.226.5

    • While connected to the Windows VM, press the start button and navigate to the Control Panel

    Windows Control Panel

    • Select Network and Internet Settings

    Network and Internet Settings Windows

    • Select Network and Sharing Center

    Network and Sharing Center Windows

    • Select Change adapter settings:

    Change adapter settings

    • Right click on "Local Area Connection" and select "Properties"

    Local Area Connection Properties

    • Select “Internet Protocol Version 4”

    Internet Protocol version v4

    • Set the IP settings according to your network configuration based on the Gateway and Instance IP addresses, as noted in the previous steps. All of the other parameters have to be configured exactly the same as the ones presented in the following image:

    Windows IP network configuration

    • -Click “OK” to save the settings.

  • STEP 5: Accept firewall rules

    • Select “start”, navigate to the search bar and write the following: “Windows Firewall with Advanced Security”.

    • Select the inbound rules on the top left corner of the page, as illustrated in the image below

    Windows Firewall with Advanced Security

    -Choose Public Profile and select “Enable Rule” on the following rules:

    a)Remote Desktop - shadow (TCP-IN)
b)Remote Desktop - User mode (TCP-IN)
c)Remote Desktop - User Mode (UDP-IN)

    Enable Rule

    • In order to apply the “Public profile” for all the mentioned rules, double click on each rule, navigate to Advanced settings and select only Public profile

    Public Profile Firewall

In case you configure a new or another IP address from inside of the Windows VM as described above, you should also update the IP address of the corresponding instance in the Instances tab. This can be achieved following the attached guideline: Update Interface IP address

  • STEP 6: Adding Ephemeral Disks

    Once a new extra disk has been assigned, following the creation or the resize of a Windows Instance, the user is able to login via the console and add this additional disk volume through the Windows Disk Management. In order to achieve this, please follow the steps below :

    • Right click on “Start” at the bottom left corner.

    Start Disk Management on Windows OS

    • Select the "Disk Management" option and navigate to the disk management menu.

    Disk Management on Windows

    • Once you have selected this option, you are able to add the new extra disk by right clicking on the Unallocated volume and selecting the "New Simple Volume...".

    Add new simple volume

    • Now follow the next steps of the Volume Wizard as described below:

      a. Press "Next" on the "Welcome Window". Welcome Volume Wizard

      b. Specify the Volume Size Specify Volume Size

      b. Assign the drive letter. Assign drive letter

      c. Select the filesystem and format the volume Format the drive letter

      d. Press "Finish" for completing the Volume Wizard Finish Volume Wizard

    Completed simple volume partition

    As you can notice, a new volume called (D:) has been added as a Primary Partition.

    Note

    The same process should be followed, in order to generate additional extra disk volumes.

  • STEP 7: Configure the MTU in Windows Server

It is advisable to check the MTU settings of the network interface. Unfortunately the DHCP option does affect Windows images due to cloud init issues with Windows templates. As a first step, you can check your MTU by doing the following.

Open an Administrator command prompt and run:

    netsh interface ipv4 show interfaces

Show Interfaces

This will show you your current MTU settings. Pay close attention to the Idx # of the ethernet interface 2. You will need this information to change the MTU. To change the MTU to 9000 use this command. (you will need to replace the “5” with the Idx for your ethernet interface)

netsh interface ipv4 set subinterface "5" mtu=9000 store=persistent

Configure Interfaces MTU

Now reboot the system for the changes to be effective and test the connectivity.

An MTU limit that is set too high can cause fragmented packets and packet loss on your connection. The following example will explain how to test if your MTU limit is sending fragmented packets and will explain how to find the effective MTU value.

We have set the MTU PPP connection size of 9000 bytes, however 28 bytes of this number is reserved for IP/ICMP overhead, so the effective MTU size in our case here is 8972 (9000-28).

In order to test the above scenario from a command line, run this command:

    ping <Controller_IP_ADDRESS> -f -l <MTU size>

(The -f marks packets that should not be fragmented in the ping. -l sets the size of the packet)

Here is an example:

Test interface MTU