Preparing a Windows Image for use on OpenStack

Although one can in principle run a vanilla Windows install in a VM managed by OpenStack, in practice this is not very convenient or practical. Instead, one wants to prepare an image that can be used repeatedly as a template for new Windows instances.

This is involves a number of tasks such as setting up users, installing drivers for efficient access to OpenStack storage devices (VirtIO), setting up networking, and activating the installation with a valid product key. One probably also wants to set up Cloudbase-Init, the cloud-init implementation for Windows. cloud-init provides a service for performing various system configuration/initialization tasks upon logging into an instance via OpenStack. For example, a common task is to initialize and provide authentication credentials (such as SSH keys) for a system user on the instance based on their OpenStack credentials. It has many other uses as well too, which we may get into below as needed.

Some resources I've found useful:

• Creating a Windows image for OpenStack
• Windows Imaging Tools (from Cloudbase)
• Example: Microsoft Windows image (from OpenStack)