Creating a new Windows Server with the API

Prerequisites:

• You are familiar with the STACKIT IAAS API & CLI: How to create a VM via IaaS-API

Find the correct Windows Server image

The first important step to create a server with the STACKIT IAAS API or CLI is to find the proper STACKIT image for your operating system version. STACKIT currently provides images for the following Windows Server versions:

• Windows Server 2016
• Windows Server 2019
• Windows Server 2022
• Windows Server 2025

You can generate a list of all generally available or all currently released Windows Server images by using one of the STACKIT IAAS CLI commands below.

List all generally available images

Please make sure to provide your projectID in the command.

stackit curl https://iaas.api.eu01.stackit.cloud/v1/projects/{projectID}/images | jq '.items[] | select(.name == "^Windows Server (2016|2019|2022|2025) Standard") | {id, name, status, scope}'

List all currently released images

Please make sure to provide your projectID in the command.

stackit curl https://iaas.api.eu01.stackit.cloud/v1/projects/{projectID}/images | jq '.items[] | select(.name == "^Windows Server (2016|2019|2022|2025) Standard$") | {id, name, status, scope}'

Example output

{
 "id": "0a179f46-16ef-4862-b57b-756c15a902a5",
 "name": "Windows Server 2016 Standard",
 "status": "AVAILABLE",
 "scope": "public"
},
{
 "id": "70a1fc51-c43c-4e0e-9d2c-d40433640cad",
 "name": "Windows Server 2019 Standard",
 "status": "AVAILABLE",
 "scope": "public"
},
{
 "id": "e22f8a22-334c-4294-991c-bd5158380155",
 "name": "Windows Server 2022 Standard",
 "status": "AVAILABLE",
 "scope": "public"
},
{
 "id": "03e41242-6d4a-4432-bd56-41f8d00a4202",
 "name": "Windows Server 2025 Standard",
 "status": "AVAILABLE",
 "scope": "public"
}

Please be aware that STACKIT images are getting irreversibly deleted after one year.

Also when using older STACKIT images to spawn new servers, these servers might be incompatible with the latest STACKIT feature stack and might not support every function anymore.

Create a STACKIT Windows Server

We provide an OS image that allows you to deploy STACKIT Windows Server instances.

STACKIT IAAS API

If you prefer to create your server using the STACKIT IAAS API, please follow the documentation linked here: How to create a VM via IaaS-API

Additionally, ensure that you provide the correct user data to pass your user credentials to the new server. This step is required to log in after the first boot configuration is completed.

The following section explains how to prepare the user data.

Injecting user credentials via custom user data

If you want to use custom scripts to configure your server individually on the first boot, we currently support cloud-config and x-shellscript (e.g., PowerShell for Windows or Bash for Linux) to inject custom user data into your machine.

Important: The value of the "userData" field in the API request must be encoded in Base64 when submitting the request. You can use free online Base64 encoding/decoding tools like: https://www.base64decode.org

Provide plaintext username(s) and password(s)

To create the server with predefined user credentials, provide them in a YAML file as user data like shown in the examples below.

Example 1: Set only the default administrator’s password

#cloud-configusers: - name: Administrator passwd: ‘Your_at_least_15_characters_password’ groups: Administrators

Example 2: Set passwords for additional users

#cloud-configusers: - name: AdditionalUserName1 passwd: ‘Your_at_least_15_characters_password’ groups: Administrators - name: AdditionalUserName2 passwd: ‘Your_at_least_15_characters_password’ groups: Administrators

In the example above, the default Administrator account will receive a randomly generated password, as its username cannot be renamed.

Note: If the provided passwords do not meet the required complexity criteria, you will not be able to use them to log in to the instance.

Password requirements:

• At least 15 characters
• At least 1 special character
• At least 1 number
• At least 1 capital letter

Join Your Server to a Domain

You can add your server to a domain and log in with a domain user by providing the following data in the user data configuration in form of a Powershell script.

Example: Domain-join setup

$host_name = ‘Server-Test’ # Rename the computer during the AD join$dns1 = ‘10.1.0.214’$dns2 = ‘10.1.0.214’ # Optional$DomainName = ‘contoso.local’$DomainUser = ‘contoso.local\stackituser’$DomainPassword = ‘PutYourPasswordHere’

Ensure that the provided credentials and domain settings match your Active Directory configuration.

For further details on user data, please refer to the official cloudbase-init documentation: Userdata — cloudbase-init 1.1.7 documentation

Additionally, please review the FAQs & Known Issues Windows Server for more information.