docs: add example configuration for Windows-based runners

[zillemarco]

Added an example configuration to use the module to set up Windows-based runners and an example on how to create a custom Windows AMI usable with the configuration.

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[zillemarco]

Hi @kayman-mk 👋 Here you can finally find the docs and examples we had talked about in #1233 🙂

Since I extracted the example from our setup, that's still based on the version 8.1.0 of the module but that should still be compatible with the latest version 🤞

[kayman-mk]

What do you think about moving this to a new example in examples/? Would be easier for newcomers and the module call is always checked against the latest version.

Thanks for sharing your configuration.

[zillemarco]

What do you think about moving this to a new example in examples/? Would be easier for newcomers and the module call is always checked against the latest version.

Thanks for sharing your configuration.

That's a good idea @kayman-mk, I agree. Only one thing I'd like to check: those examples are not really deployed, right? Because we'd need to create the Windows AMI for that to work otherwise.

If instead those are just checked with, I don't know, terraform plan to make sure the module syntax is correct, then I could just put some placeholder values 🙂

[kayman-mk]

Placeholders work fine. The examples are never deployed, right.

[github-actions]

This PR is stale because it has been open 60 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 15 days.

[zillemarco]

Sorry it took me this long to get back to this @kayman-mk 🙇 Could you please have a look at the changes and at the pipelines that are failing but I'm not really sure why? 🙏

Thanks a lot 🙂

[jonpas]

Currently running this on our company CI infrastructure on AWS. Very good guide and mostly seems to work.

After updating the GitLab Runner version and rebuilding the AMI, you have to update the AMI ID in the module as well. AWS generates a new ID for each AMI build apparently.

Also had some issues with docker commands during Windows AMI build failing due to docker_engine not being available. That fixed itself after a few hours though.

[nexonen]

Hey @zillemarco - thank you so much for doing this! I've managed to get a windows runner in our infrastructure thanks to your help.

A couple of things that I noticed:

• I had to rename the packer file to have a .pkr.hcl extension
• I didn't see m6a.medium and m6i.medium as valid types - smallest I could find was .large
• I didn't find it necessary to set private_address_only = false in either the runner or the worker - seemed to work fine without.

Thanks again, really appreciate all the work you did on this!

[zillemarco]

Thanks a lot @nexonen 🙇 I must share this appreciation with @RicePatrick who helped me a ton while working on our setup 🙂

I had to rename the packer file to have a .pkr.hcl extension

Good call, I'll fix this.

I didn't see m6a.medium and m6i.medium as valid types - smallest I could find was .large

Maybe AWS doesn't have those instance types available in the region you're deplying to? 🤔

I didn't find it necessary to set private_address_only = false in either the runner or the worker - seemed to work fine without.

I'll try without, but when I first set up the runners for out infra this was necessary 🤷 Maybe things changed in the meantime 🙂

[kayman-mk]

Good job, guys! Makes the Windows setup a lot easier.

[kayman-mk]

@zillemarco This PR can be merged? I will check the workflows.

[zillemarco]

@kayman-mk yup, should be good to merge now that the workflows passed 👍