Windows runners

Running jobs on Windows, including an interactive desktop session for tests that need one.

Point machine_image at a Windows image and Airship sends a Windows boot script instead of a Linux one. There is no flag to set.

Windows runners need an eligible Windows licence with multi-tenant licence rights in your own account. Airship launches the image you name; the licensing is between you and your cloud provider.

AWS

Name a Windows AMI. The ubuntu2204 and ubuntu2404 aliases are Linux, so Windows always means a specific image.

airship.yaml

runners:
  - name: windows
    cloud: aws
    instance_type: m7i.xlarge
    machine_image: ami-0123456789abcdef0     # a Windows Server AMI
    region: us-east-1
    labels: [airship-windows]

Azure

A marketplace URN, or the same as a mapping:

airship.yaml

runners:
  - name: windows
    cloud: azure
    instance_type: Standard_D4s_v5
    region: uksouth
    machine_image:
      publisher: microsoftwindowsdesktop
      offer: windows-11
      sku: win11-23h2-pro
      version: latest
    labels: [airship-windows]

  - name: windows-arm
    cloud: azure
    instance_type: Standard_D4ps_v5          # the p makes it arm64
    region: uksouth
    machine_image:
      publisher: microsoftwindowsdesktop
      offer: windows11preview-arm64
      sku: win11-23h2-pro
      version: latest
    labels: [airship-windows-arm]

Windows machines take noticeably longer to boot and register than Linux ones, and longer again on Azure. An idle runner is worth more here than anywhere else.

Google Cloud

Name a Windows image or family in your project or Google’s:

machine_image: windows-2022

Settings

extra_config:
  run_as: interactive
  runner_user: runner
  runner_path: C:\actions-runner

run_as · string

interactive logs a local account in automatically and runs the runner in its desktop session — what UI tests, browser automation and anything needing a window station require. Without it the runner runs as a service, with no interactive desktop.

runner_user · string · default: "runner"

The local account used for run_as: interactive. Its password is generated on the machine and discarded.

runner_path · string · default: "C:\\actions-runner"

Where the runner is installed. Point it at a path your own image already has the runner in to skip the download.

What to know

Shell	The runner’s default on Windows, so steps are PowerShell unless a step says otherwise
Disk	On Azure, the OS disk defaults to the image’s own size rather than 75 GiB. Raise it with storageProfile
Labels	The runner adds its own Windows label, so a job can ask for [self-hosted, airship-windows, Windows]
Boot once	A Windows machine that reboots powers off rather than registering again
Caching	Cache acceleration is Linux-only; a Windows runner with cache: true launches without it and records a warning
No inbound access	No RDP is opened, and the administrator password Azure requires is generated in memory and discarded

A Windows image with the runner, your SDKs and your toolchain already installed is worth building early — the download and dependency install cost more on Windows than on Linux. See Custom images.