Windows Bursting on AWS and Azure

Requirements for bursting Windows cloud nodes.

Note: Testing has been done on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2012.
Bursting of Windows virtual machines is currently supported on AWS and Azure. Windows cloud bursting is similar to cloud bursting on Linux platforms. Three special requirements are necessary to burst Windows cloud nodes.

OS Image Name

When creating the OS image, the name of the image must contain the term "windows" (case insensitive). For example:

On AWS, the AMI Name should look something like this Windows_Server-2012-R2_RTM-English-64Bit-Base-2019.11.13

On Azure, the Image Name should look something like Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter.

Inbound Security Rule for RDP

Secondly, an inbound rule to open the port 3389 must be added to the AWS security group or the Azure network security group that is associated with the cloud provider virtual network. This allows a connection to be made to the Windows VM via RDP so that the PBS MoM can be installed.

For more information see AWS: Authorizing Inbound Traffic for Your Windows Instances and Azure: Cannot connect remotely to a VM because RDP port is not enabled in NSG.


AWS Inbound Security Rule for RDP
Figure 1. AWS Inbound Security Rule for RDP

Azure Inbound Security Rule for RDP
Figure 2. Azure Inbound Security Rule for RDP

Startup Script

The cloud node startup script must use a PowerShell script. For more information see PowerShell Scripting. The below PowerShell script example generates a file in C:\Windows\Temp:

<powershell>
$file = $env:SystemRoot + "\Temp\" + (Get-Date).ToString("MM-dd-yy-hh-mm")
New-Item $file -ItemType file
</powershell>