I am performing some UI Automation on GCP using a Windows Server.
The process is as follows:
=> Machine Switches on at a defined time
=> RDP Connection to Machine
=> UI Interaction Script Runs on Startup
=> Process Ends
=> Machine Switches off at a defined time
All the components have been fulfilled except for automating the RDP connection in some way or other. I referred to this link but didn't find much insights or documentations.
Does anyone know a way to Automate an RDP connection right after instance turns on in GCP?
There is a windows application called IAP Desktop, using that you can manage multiple remote Desktop connection to Windows VM. While connecting to the VM you can save the credentials which will allow you to access the Windows VM using RDP just after boot on.
Also to automate the Windows password generation here is the documentation related to 1, inside of that document there are both options available automate or manually.
How are you deploying your startup script?
During the boot sequence, a script will either run before, after or during the boot process. By declaring Windows-specific metadata keys, you can run startup scripts after the instance turns on.
If that doesn't work, there is a paid Cloud Automation service that sounds like it will meet your requirements.
Tried using startup-scripts but no luck IAP Desktop didn't work due to scheduling as well. Finally Managed to solve it via using Windows 10 Auto login settings. This skips login screen and the best part was that out of all the users, it allows you to login via user of your choice. After I Login to the system, I added a startup a bat file by running shell:startup and it worked great.
Related
Just looking to be pointed in the right direction here!
I have an old "Playerworlds" MMO game that I'd like to set up a semi-permanent host onto an AWS instance.
The software is from 2008, and requires an EXE file to be started in order to start the environment.
In AWS, what type of setup should I use for this type of application hosting? Is there a solution with a UI like a Virtual Machine I can log into at all?
You can create Windows Server instances of EC2's easily enough. You will use RDP to log in and manipulate the machine. I'll admit I don't know if Windows Server 2012 will run the software - fire up an instance and give it a shot.
I'm trying to run my application on GCE VM. It uses nodeJs as frontend and a Java backend. I use this server to communicate with my local computer using MQTT. This is working but after some time (one hour and a half), the server seems to go to sleep (or the ports close ?).
Both MQTT and ssh terminal interface connections are lost.
When I connect back, the application is not running anymore, it seems like the VM restarted.
Do you have any idea on how to keep my server alive ? I can give further details.
Answering my own question as John Hanley explained the solution in comments:
"By what method are you running your frontend and backend code. VMs do not go to sleep. If you are starting your software via an SSH session, that will be an issue. Your code needs to run as a service. Edit your question with more details."
I was indeed running my application via the ssh terminal which caused the problem. The solution for me was to remotely access the VM via vncserver and to launch the application using the VM's terminal.
I'm new at GCP and I'm trying to keep my process running on Jupyter Notebook after shutting down my local PC. Does anyone know how can I do it? Nowaday I open a terminal on my VM run jupter notebook and then after start the process on jupyter I'd like to turn my machine off.
I keep following the process on my cellphone and shutdown on there. Does anyone know how to turn this off automatically when it stops?
Sorry to make two questions at once, but I think that one is related with another. If it does not I can edit and make another one.
This is a technical limitation of Jupyter Notebooks unfortunately. The browser window contains the code which updates the notebook itself, so if you close the browser window then there is not process running to update the notebook.
However, there is one workaround which you may find useful.
There is a library called Fairing that you can use with GCP's new AI Platform Notebooks which allows you to pack up your notebook and run it remotely, and that library will save the results of that execution in a GCP Storage bucket. No active internet connection required (once you kick of the notebook run).
You can learn how to use it by creating a new GCP AI Platform Notebook and looking at the tutorials folder inside it. You can also find additional tutorials for Fairing here
Typically to keep your remote sessions up in the event of network connectivity loss (which also covers shutting down the local computer) you'd use a terminal multiplexer application. From Known issues:
Intermittent disconnects: At this time, we do not offer a specific SLA for connection lifetimes. Use terminal multiplexers like tmux
or screen if you plan to keep the terminal window open for an
extended period of time.
But these multiplexers are terminal/text-mode apps, so you'd have to launch the notebook with the --no-browser and then connect your local browser to its port.
You can find a recipe based on tmux and a local browser connection to the notebook using an SSH tunnel at Using Jupyter notebooks securely on remote linux machines.
As for shutting down the session - you'd just have to instruct the multiplexer application to end the session (or terminate the multiplexer app itself) - which you could do automatically via a wrapper script first invoking your process and immediately after the process ends invoking the commands to shutdown the session.
I have a ColdFusion11 environment with two app servers defined. The default cfusion server was created with a Windows system service wrapper to go along with it; the second app server, for some reason, was not.
The SC tool was later used to create a Windows service wrapper for the second app server; however, when the 2nd app server is controlled within the cfusion Enterprise Manager instance, it does not use the Windows Service wrapper to control it. Is there a configuration file I can amend that will instruct CF to invoke the Windows service wrapper to control this second service? This is particularly important as this 2nd server instance has a logon identity that must be used at startup, but if the server is restarted within the CF console, the identity is obviously not used.
In effect, I need to tell the cfusion enterprise manager to use the Windows service wrapper to control the 2nd app server instance, not to just control it directly. I'm assuming there is a configuration setting buried deep within the bowels of CF that would allow me to specify this.
I've tried searching the XML configuration files, looking for a non-obvious setting within them that might point to a startup configuration parameter, but so far have found nothing. Something must control how a secondary app server is managed, so I thought I'd ask here for some insight.
For the sake of anyone else who might encounter this situation, I've discovered the answer. It has nothing to do with changing the configuration of the application server itself.
When the ColdFusion11 administrator console is told to start an instance of another application server within the Enterprise Manager, it first queries the Windows Service Control database for a defined service of the exact name "ColdFusion 11 Application Server [AppServerName]" (without the brackets). If it finds such a service, CF automatically invokes the service wrapper and starts it. Absent that, a direct invocation of the CF instance commences.
The solution to the issue for an app server created without a Windows service wrapper is, when the 'sc' utility is invoked to create the service, to provide a service name that exactly matches the format above.
I currently am using the ec2 API to launch an instance of windows server. When the instance has started, I want to open up chrome to a specific webpage before I need to RDP into the server for a specific profile. I have tried setting up a task scheduler and working with user scripts to do this, but I haven't had any luck getting to work properly. What would be the best way to start up a program right when an instance starts?
Thanks
It might be better to not launch chrome when the instance starts (having chrome running serves no purpose if no user is logged in), more likely you want to run a program when a user starts an RDP connection:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770821.aspx