How do I start a Microsoft Windows virtual machine?
Go to Project -> Compute -> Instances and klick on your Windows instance to open the Overview.
..and then click on Console.
As of April 2019 please follow the procedure how to start a Windows VM as described below. Should you have set up a Windows Image before April 2019 please click here to find the instructions.
You will see the Windows Lock Screen. Press the Send CtrlAltDel button in the top right of the console window.
Windows will now prompt you to sign in as enginesadmin and wants you to set a password.
Password Complexity Rules:
1. Passwords must be a minimum of 14 characters in length.
2. Passwords must contain characters from three of the following five categories:
- Uppercase letters of European languages (A through Z, with diacritic marks, Greek and Cyrillic characters)
- Lowercase letters of European languages (a through z, sharp-s, with diacritic marks, Greek and Cyrillic characters)
- Base 10 digits (0 through 9)
- Non-alphanumeric characters (special characters): (~!@#$%^&*_-+=`|\(){}[]:;"'<>,.?/) Currency symbols such as the Euro or British Pound are not counted as special characters for this policy setting.
- Any Unicode character that is categorized as an alphabetic character but is not uppercase or lowercase. This includes Unicode characters from Asian languages.
In order to access it from outside, you will have to create a firewall rule in the Security Groups setting for this virtual machine to allow port 3389.
Remote Desktop Connection
There are remote desktop (RDP) clients for different operating systems (Windows, Mac OS and Linux). Microsoft provides applications for Windows and Mac OS. The Mac OS version can also be downloaded from the App Store.
For Linux users, there are multiple apps:
After having assigned the Security Group and a public IP to your running Windows machine, you can configure the Microsoft RDP application to connect to your VM. Enter the public IP from your VM into the field "PC name" and click on "Add".
Now doubleclick the screen with your public IP and enter the default username "enginesadmin" and the previously set passsword. Click on "Continue".
- You can receive a warning message stating that the server has presented an invalid certificate to the RDP client. This happens when the Windows Server uses its own self-signed certificate. You can ignore this warning, because you own this server, or install a official certificate on the server.
- Some RDP Applications even do not allow connections to such “untrusted” servers and deny the connection.