Windows Server 2016 is gaining significant traction in OpenStack and other clouds, thanks to the support for Windows Docker containers and lots of other new features. While there’s no OpenStack Windows Server 2016 image directly available for download, the good news is that our automated build scripts will do all the work for you. All you need is a…
We’re getting quite a few questions about how to set the admin password in OpenStack Windows instances, so let’s clarify the available options. nova get-password The secure and proper way to set passwords in OpenStack Windows instances is by letting Cloudbase-Init generate a random password and post it encrypted on the Nova metadata service. The password can…
Nano Server is a Windows OS created for the cloud age. It has been announced by Microsoft this April and is going to be shipped with Windows Server 2016. What makes Nano Server special? A very small disk footprint compared to traditional Windows Server deployments (a few hundred MB instead of multiple GB). A very…
A Hyper-V related question that shows regularly up in the forums is how to setup virtual switch ports in promiscuous mode so that external traffic can be received / monitored on the host’s root partition or on virtual machines. Hyper-V 2012 introduced the concept of port monitoring (also called port mirroring) which can be enabled on…
Putting together OpenStack and Puppet is a great way to satisfy almost any deployment scenario. There are a lot of resources on the web about how to set up such an infrastructure, but mostly Linux related. The main goal of this blog post is to provide a reference on how to deploy the Puppet agent on…
The usage of passwords is a common practice to authenticate users, but it becomes also a weak point when it comes to password distribution and management of a large number of servers, like for example in an OpenStack cloud (or any type of cloud, for the sake of it). Background: password-less Linux image deployments…