Windows runners

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

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.

string

default:"runner"

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

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.

Getting started

Your cloud

Runner configuration

Faster pipelines

Across an organization

Running Airship

Self-hosting

Windows runners

AWS

Azure

Google Cloud

Settings

What to know

​AWS

​Azure

​Google Cloud

​Settings

​What to know

AWS

Azure

Google Cloud

Settings

What to know