115 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
115 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
---
|
|
page_title: "Vagrant 1.6 Feature Preview: Windows Guests"
|
|
title: "Feature Preview: Windows Guests"
|
|
author: "Mitchell Hashimoto"
|
|
author_url: https://github.com/mitchellh
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
Vagrant 1.6 will add a monumental feature to Vagrant: full Windows guest support.
|
|
The ability of Vagrant to manage Windows environments just as easy as
|
|
Linux environments has been requested for years and the time for
|
|
complete, official support has come.
|
|
|
|
Please don't mistake guest support for running Vagrant _on Windows_. Vagrant
|
|
has fully supported running on Windows for years, and works great. Vagrant
|
|
1.6 adds support for Vagrant to run Windows within the Vagrant environments
|
|
(in VirtualBox, Hyper-V, EC2, etc.).
|
|
|
|
The Windows guest support coming in Vagrant 1.6 allows you to spin up
|
|
Windows environments just as easily as you would Linux environments, and
|
|
lets you use PowerShell scripts, Chef, Puppet, etc. to install and configure
|
|
software.
|
|
|
|
And just as Linux has `vagrant ssh` as a first-class citizen, Windows
|
|
guests have `vagrant rdp`, which allow single-command access
|
|
to a complete remote desktop environment to your Windows environment.
|
|
|
|
Read on to learn more.
|
|
|
|
READMORE
|
|
|
|
### Demo
|
|
|
|
Seeing is believing, so we've prepared a couple videos below showing
|
|
how easy it is to use Vagrant with Windows guests.
|
|
|
|
<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/92487440" width="680" height="382" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
|
|
|
|
<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/92520901" width="680" height="382" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
|
|
|
|
### Windows
|
|
|
|
Windows is hugely popular and support for Windows development environments
|
|
has been the most requested feature by far for the recent year.
|
|
|
|
The Windows support is as easy to use as the Linux support: you just need
|
|
a box file that has Windows pre-installed, then you `vagrant up`. Synced
|
|
folders, networking, and provisioners all work.
|
|
|
|
Vagrant is able to communicate with Windows over either **SSH** or
|
|
**WinRM**. WinRM is more conventional, but if you have Cygwin installed with
|
|
an SSH server, Vagrant is able to use that too.
|
|
|
|
The support for WinRM is new in 1.6. For backwards compatibility reasons,
|
|
you must explicitly tell Vagrant when to use WinRM:
|
|
|
|
```
|
|
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
|
|
# ...
|
|
|
|
config.vm.communicator = "winrm"
|
|
end
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
That is the only change that is necessary for Vagrant to use Windows!
|
|
Vagrant will automatically detect that the operating system in its
|
|
environment is Windows, and will adapt accordingly.
|
|
|
|
Provisioners such as shell scripts, Chef, and Puppet are fully supported
|
|
and will run within Windows Vagrant environments. The shell provisioner
|
|
will run PowerShell and batch scripts if it is being used over WinRM.
|
|
|
|
### RDP
|
|
|
|
Accessing a Windows machine is unlike accessing a Linux machine. The
|
|
primary method for performing administrative tasks on Windows is via
|
|
[Remote Desktop](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Desktop_Protocol).
|
|
|
|
For Linux, Vagrant provides `vagrant ssh` for one-command access to
|
|
the machine. We wanted to make accessing a Windows machine just as easy,
|
|
so we've created the `vagrant rdp` command. This command opens an RDP
|
|
client pre-configured to communicate to the Vagrant environment.
|
|
|
|
If SSH is available, `vagrant ssh` will still work for Windows.
|
|
|
|
To open a PowerShell or command prompt, use `vagrant rdp` to open the
|
|
remote desktop client, then open the appropriate console. This is the
|
|
conventional way to work with remote Windows machines.
|
|
|
|
### Thanks vagrant-windows!
|
|
|
|
Early in the Vagrant 1.6 development process,
|
|
[Shawn Neal](https://github.com/sneal) and
|
|
[Paul Morton](https://github.com/pmorton) became core committers to
|
|
Vagrant. These are two of the brains behind
|
|
[vagrant-windows](https://github.com/WinRb/vagrant-windows), an impressive
|
|
Vagrant plugin that has been unofficially bringing Windows guest
|
|
support to Vagrant for years.
|
|
|
|
The core of the Windows support presented in this feature preview
|
|
today has been from reintegrating vagrant-windows into Vagrant itself.
|
|
Supporting Windows in such a smooth way wouldn't have been possible
|
|
without the work done by these folks, and the public should know of
|
|
their contribution.
|
|
|
|
Thank you vagrant-windows team!
|
|
|
|
### Next
|
|
|
|
This is a huge milestone for Vagrant. At least one person at every
|
|
conference talk given by myself in the past two years has asked me when Vagrant
|
|
will support Windows. I'm excited to finally be able to say "it does now!"
|
|
|
|
Next week we'll continue this series with another feature preview.
|
|
The feature we'll be covering next week is a fun one.
|