I am deploying a CloudFormation template which launches an EC2 instance from the Windows_Server-2019-English-Full-Base-2020.05.13 AMI.
By default, the Windows Server image has an Administrator user. To connect to the instance via RDP, I have to navigate to the console, click on Connect and then get the generated random password from the console.
Is there a way I can set the RDP password to a custom value? I would like to do this from the CloudFormation template, in the UserData section.
Based on the comments.
The solution was to use the following command in UserData:
net user Administrator "new_password"
The command, as explained in the docs, can be used to change admin password.
This works because UserData executes under administrator account (ref):
User data scripts are executed from the local administrator account when a random password is generated.
For completeness and future reference, here's what the CloudFormation template now looks like:
"UserData": {
"Fn::Base64": {
"Fn::Join": [
"",
[
"<powershell>\n",
"net user Administrator ",
{
"Ref": "Password"
},
"\n",
"</powershell>\n"
]
]
}
}
where Password is a CloudFormation string parameter with the password.