Windows self-hosted runners

Windows self-hosted runners for GitHub Actions are available since v2.4.0.

They start more slowly than Linux runners (~2min currently), and are not yet 1-1 compatible with the official GitHub Actions Windows runners. But we will get there.

RunsOn Windows runners are ~10x cheaper than the official GitHub Actions Windows runners (m7i family).

To use them, you need to reference the Windows 2022 base image and an instance family that supports Windows:

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on:
      - runs-on=${{ github.run_id }}
      - image=windows22-base-x64
      - family=m7i
      - ...other labels...

Example

name: Windows

on:
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  default:
    runs-on:
      - runs-on=${{ github.run_id }}
      - image=windows22-base-x64
      - family=m7i
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Check current dir and env variables
        run: |
          dir .
          echo $env:USERNAME
          echo $env:RUNS_ON_RUNNER_NAME
      - name: Logs
        run: |
          Get-Content -Path "C:\runs-on\output.log"
      - name: Users
        run: |
          Get-LocalUser | Format-Table -AutoSize Name,Enabled,PasswordLastSet

Inspecting agent logs

On Windows runners, the output of the RunsOn agent is stored in the C:\runs-on\output.log file.

Limitations

• Windows runners are not yet 1-1 compatible with the official GitHub Actions Windows runners.
• Windows runners are quite slow to boot (~2min currently).
• preinstall in custom images is not supported yet.