Windows

Windows Variants

We provide a range of different "variants" of each Windows version, and they are named with the following keywords:

Eval

This is the Evaluation version of Windows. The evaluation period is 90 days for Client SKUs and 180 days for server SKUs. When the evaluation period has run out, Windows will automatically shut down a short while after you boot it. An evaluation period can be restarted "a few" (varies for every SKU) time, by issuing the command slmgr.vbs /rearm in a command prompt ran as admin.

Unlicensed

The images marked with "Unlicensed" does not have any license built-in, and must be licensed and activated by the user. All NTNU employees and students can obtain a license for all currently supported Windows versions through Azure Dev Tools For Teaching.

Licensed

The images marked with "Licensed" have the KMS-key builtin, and will automatically activate themselves through NTNU IT's licensing servers. We can only provide this solution for server SKUs.

Important note: These images has "win.ntnu.no" set as their global DNS search suffix. This is mandatory in order to make the automatic activation work. DO NOT REMOVE IT. You can add your own in addition to it if needed.

How to log in?

Allow Remote Desktop in a security group

If you've created a Windows virtual machine, you obviously can't log into it through SSH. You need to access it through Remote Desktop (RDP). The steps for creating a Windows virtual machine are exactly the same as for every *nix image in the cloud - including the keypair part. To log in, you will need to add a security group that allows incoming RDP on the standard TCP port 3389 to your machine. The following example will just add this rule to the default security group.

loginansatt01:~$ openstack security group rule create --protocol tcp --ingress --dst-port 3389 default
+-------------------+--------------------------------------+
| Field             | Value                                |
+-------------------+--------------------------------------+
| created_at        | 2017-08-10T07:12:43Z                 |
| description       |                                      |
| direction         | ingress                              |
| ethertype         | IPv4                                 |
| headers           |                                      |
| id                | 01a192a8-b0b6-4944-8561-251f0f9e03ca |
| port_range_max    | 3389                                 |
| port_range_min    | 3389                                 |
| project_id        | e150a84ec8684a79a7ccd175138ad477     |
| project_id        | e150a84ec8684a79a7ccd175138ad477     |
| protocol          | tcp                                  |
| remote_group_id   | None                                 |
| remote_ip_prefix  | 0.0.0.0/0                            |
| revision_number   | 1                                    |
| security_group_id | 68c22b5c-eda0-4f1a-a59d-fa4feac1c0e2 |
| updated_at        | 2017-08-10T07:12:43Z                 |
+-------------------+--------------------------------------+

If you created a new security group for this purpose (which you should), you also need to attach that security group to your Windows virtual machine:

loginansatt01:~$ openstack server add security group <server-name> <security-group-name>

Obtain the password

Our Windows images will disable the default Administrator user, and create a new user called "Admin." The password is randomly generated at boot, and will be encrypted with the public key provided at server creation time.

You can either obtain the password through the web interface, or with a command. After the password  is obtained, you should have everything you need to access the Windows machine through RDP via its floating IP.

CLI

To fetch the password, run the following command:

loginansatt01:~$ nova get-password <vm-name> .ssh/id_rsa
<your password for the Admin user>

Web GUI

From the dropdown menu for your Windows instance, select "Retrieve Password"

 Then either browse for, or paste your private key from the keypair you provided when the instance was created, and click "Decrpyt Password". The password will show up in the "Password" textbox.