Windows Provisioner

Documentation for Windows Provisioner

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Table of Contents

• About the Project
• Key Features
• Roadmap
• Provider Support
• Built With
• Contributing
• License
• Contact
• Acknowledgements

About the Project

Windows Provisioner is a provisioner package that provisions a Windows Server guest from a STARTcloud Windows box, prepared with the Windows roles of the startcloud.startcloud_roles collection. It is part of the STARTcloud ecosystem, riding on the Core Provisioner driver (fetched automatically from the release pinned in driver.version) and the startcloud.startcloud_roles and startcloud.hcl_roles Ansible collections.

Key Features

• Role Management: Offers a comprehensive set of Ansible roles for various aspects of VM preparation and configuration.
• Technology Installation: Automates the installation of services such as Chocolatey, OpenSSH, Sysmon, Winlogbeat and Telegraf from the startcloud_roles collection and the HCL Notes client from the hcl_roles collection, simplifying the deployment process.
• Service Configuration: Simplifies the setup of necessary services on VMs, streamlining the deployment process.
• Dependency Installation: Handles the installation of required dependencies, reducing manual setup efforts.

Including Windows Provisioner

Releases are built by release-please from conventional commits: every release carries an immutable windows_provisioner-<version>.tar.gz (plus a mutable windows_provisioner.tar.gz "latest" alias) with .sha256 sidecars — the registry-shaped artifact contract the provisioner catalog uses. See RELEASE.md for how releases are produced.

For plain vagrant use, clone this repository, copy examples/Hosts.yml to Hosts.yml at the repository root, place the collection releases pinned in collections/*.version under provisioners/ansible_collections/, and run vagrant up — the pinned core driver bootstraps itself on first run.

Interacting with Hosts.yml and Hosts.rb

To integrate Windows Provisioner with the Core Provisioner, specifically with the Hosts.yml and Hosts.rb files, follow these steps:

Windows Provisioner enhances the provisioning process by automating the configuration of VMs. To utilize these roles effectively, they need to be referenced within the Hosts.yml for the Core Provisioner Hosts.rb.

1. Reference Roles in Hosts.yml: Within the Hosts.yml file, you can specify which roles should be applied to a particular host. This is done by including the role names under the roles key for each host configuration. For example:

   hosts: all
   roles:
     - startcloud.startcloud_roles.ssl
     - startcloud.startcloud_roles.windows_privacy

   This configuration indicates that the ssl and windows_privacy roles from the startcloud.startcloud_roles collection should be applied to all hosts via all.

2. Execution in Hosts.rb: The Hosts.rb script is responsible for interpreting the Hosts.yml file and generating the necessary Vagrant configurations. When the Hosts.rb script encounters a host configuration that includes roles, it automatically applies these roles during the provisioning process. There's no need for additional modifications in Hosts.rb for this purpose, as the script is designed to handle role application based on the Hosts.yml configurations.

By following these steps, you can seamlessly integrate Windows Provisioner with the Core Provisioner, leveraging the power of Ansible roles to automate the configuration and security of your VMs. This approach enhances the flexibility and extensibility of your provisioning process, allowing for a more declarative and manageable setup.

Roadmap

See the open issues for a list of proposed features (and known issues).

Provider Support

Provider	Supported by Windows Provisioner
VirtualBox	Yes
Bhyve/Zones	Yes
VMware Fusion	No
Hyper-V	No
Parallels	No
AWS EC2	Yes
Google Cloud	No
Azure	No
DigitalOcean	No
Linode	No
Vultr	No
Oracle Cloud	No
OpenStack	No
Rackspace	No
Alibaba Cloud	No
Aiven	No
Packet	No
Scaleway	No
OVH	No
Exoscale	No
Hetzner Cloud	No
KVM	Yes
QEMU	Yes
Docker Desktop	No
HyperKit	No
WSL2	No

Built With

• Vagrant - Portable Development Environment Suite.
• VirtualBox - Hypervisor.
• Ansible - Virtual Machine Automation Management.
• Core Provisioner - Core Provisioner.

Contributing

Please read CONTRIBUTING.md for details on our code of conduct, and the process for submitting pull requests to us.

Authors

• Joel Anderson - Initial work - JoelProminic
• Justin Hill - Initial work - JustinProminic
• Mark Gilbert - Refactor - MarkProminic

See also the list of contributors who participated in this project.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 - see the LICENSE.md file for details

Acknowledgments

• Hat tip to anyone whose code was used — see ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.md