This note summarizes articles from other places about Microsoft Windows images for OpenStack creation, along with some first hand experience. The whole process of creating Windows 2008 and Windows 2012 images fully usable on OpenStack instances is described there.

Prerequisite

To achieve the creation of a qcow2 Windows image for OpenStack, we need the following ISO images:

• An ISO image of the installation DVD for all OSes that we wish to use in OpenStack. These ISOs can usually be downloaded from a company‘s account on Microsoft website, once the appropriate contract has been signed. For testing purpose, Windows Server 2012 Evaluation ISO can be downloaded on Microsoft website.

• The latest VirtIO drivers for Windows. These are optimized drivers to run Windows OSes with KVM virtualized hard disk controller and network devices.

Base image creation

The first step to build a Microsoft Windows image is to install the OS in a VM as we would have done on a bare metal computer. Gridcentric‘s article about Windows image creation describes this procedure in details.

The steps to follow are:

• Create an empty qcow2 image (this will be the disk on which we‘ll install our OS). I typically use a 9 GB image for Windows 2008, and a 17 GB for Windows 2012 (although I think it should work with a 11 or 12 GB image). Example:

  $ qemu-img create -f qcow2 Windows-Server-2008-R2.qcow2 9G
  

• Next step is to launch Windows‘ installation in a (KVM) virtual machine. The following command is an example for that:

  $ kvm     -m 2048     -cdrom <WINDOWS_INSTALLER_ISO>     -drive file=Windows-Server-2008-R2.qcow2,if=virtio     -drive file=<VIRTIO_DRIVERS_ISO>,index=3,media=cdrom     -net nic,model=virtio     -net user     -nographic     -vnc :9     -k fr     -usbdevice tablet
  

• The following step consists in connecting to the display of the VM launched previously through VNC, in order to manually pursue the installation. This can be done with the following command:

  $ xvncviewer <IP_OF_HYPERVISOR>:9
  

• During the installation, Windows will ask for the Hard Disk controller driver. We have to select the VirtIO driver, which is located on the VirtIO CDROM (WIN7 directory for Windows 2008, and WIN8 directory for Windows 2012).

• Once the basic Windows installation is done, we have to set the appropriate Network device driver in the Windows Devices Manager. The Network device VirtIO driver is available in the same directory than the Hard Disk controller driver specified in the previous step.

• Since VMs will be managed by RDP, we have to activate the service. This is done by navigating through the following menu: Computer (right-lick) -> Properties -> remote tab, and selecting the following option: allow connections from computers running any version of Remote Desktop.

• An additional step consisting in opening the appropriate Firewall ports is required on Windows 2012: Network (right-click) -> Properties -> Windows Firewall -> Advanced Settings -> Inbound rules. Then enable: Remote Desktop - Shadow, Remote Desktop - User Mode TCP, Remote Desktop - User Mode UDP.

Customizing image for OpenStack

The previous steps allowed us to have Windows fully installed in a KVM virtual machine. The last steps consist in installing Cloud-Init for Windows, a Windows implementation of the Linux based Cloud-Init mechanism. This set of scripts transforms a legacy OS image into a ready for OpenStack image. At instantiation of a VM, Cloud-Init fetches from a meta-data server, data such as ssh public key and hostname that allows the instance to become unique. Cloud-Init base is Open source, and Cloudbase provides an installer on its blog. We‘ll install Cloud-Init by injecting the installer that we just downloaded. To to that, we have to follow these steps:

• Shutdown Windows

• Mount the qcow2 image on the hypervisor filesystem, then copy the installer on Windows‘ administrator desktop, with something like:

  $ sudo qemu-nbd -c /dev/nbd2 Windows-Server-2008-R2.qcow2
  $ sudo mount /dev/nbd2p2 mnt/
  $ cp <INSTALLER> <ADMINISTRATOR_DESKTOP_ON_WINDOWS>
  $ sudo umount mnt/
  $ sudo qemu-nbd -d /dev/nbd2
  

• Restart Windows in KVM with the same command that we used to install Windows in the first place:

  $ kvm     -m 2048     -cdrom <WINDOWS_INSTALLER_ISO>     -drive file=Windows-Server-2008-R2.qcow2,if=virtio     -drive file=<VIRTIO_DRIVERS_ISO>,index=3,media=cdrom     -net nic,model=virtio     -net user     -nographic     -vnc :9     -k fr     -usbdevice tablet
  

• Then connect again with xvncviewer:

  $ xvncviewer <IP_OF_HYPERVISOR>:9
  

• This time, we have to launch the CloudbaseInitSetup_Beta.msi installer, and follow the instructions as described on Cloudbase blog. At the end of the installation, we have to check the "run sysprep" option, but not the "shutdown" one. Sysprep is the tool provided by Microsoft to make a VM unique (generates a unique OS ID to be used for some Microsoft services), once it‘s instantiated.

• Once the installation is done, we can clean any temporary files created, then shutdown the system. The image is ready to be uploaded in OpenStack Glance:

  $ glance add name=<OPENSTACK_IMAGE_NAME> is_public=true     container_format=bare disk_format=qcow2 < <IMAGE_FILENAME>
  

Connecting to a Windows VM

The usual mechanism used in OpenStack to connect to VMs (running Linux) is ssh. A public key specified by the user launching the VM is set in the default user‘s authorized_keys file. This allows the user to connect to the VM by using the corresponding private key.

However, it is not currently possible to connect to a Windows VM with ssh (there is some work done in this direction that I‘ve not tested yet). Cloud-Init base creates an Admin user, with either:

• a password specified by the user on the command line. Note that the password must respect Windows password strength constraints (upper and lower case characters, as well as numbers). If not it will be silently ignored. For instance:

  $ nova boot --key-name <KEYPAIR_NAME> --image <IMAGE_ID>     --flavor <FLAVOR_ID> --nic net-id=<NET_ID>     --meta admin_pass=<ADMIN_PASSWORD> <VM_NAME>
  

• a password automatically generated during VM instantiation, and encrypted with the ssh public key provided when launching the VM. Such password can be retrieved and decrypted with the corresponding private ssh key, by using the following command (note that the private key is used locally):

  $ nova get-password <VM_NAME_OR_ID> <SSH_PRIVATE_KEY>
  

Note that to connect to a Windows VM from Linux, prefer using xfreerdp instead of rdesktop. The pointer is bogus when connecting to a windows 2012 VM using rdesktop.