ML.
1/1/2025
#devops #sre #windows #setup #guide #configuration

Setting up SRE & DevOps Environment on Windows

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📖 Table of contents

🧠 Introduction

In the world of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and DevOps,
having a robust and efficient development environment is crucial.
While many professionals in this field often gravitate towards Linux-based systems,
Windows can also be a powerful platform for SRE and DevOps tasks.
This guide will walk you through setting up a comprehensive SRE/DevOps environment on a Windows machine.

I mean obviously it is kinda joke, but there are situations when companies tend to wish you to use Windows and you have to adapt to it.

So I decided to leave here few notes, to have them always handy in case I would need to work on Windows.

💎 Setting Up Your Environment

First, after finally you log into the Windows machine, you need to update Powershell:

winget install --id Microsoft.PowerShell --source winget

📦 Missing Package Manager

And install the missing package manager - Scoop (the Homebrew equivalent for Windows):

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser
Invoke-RestMethod -Uri https://get.scoop.sh | Invoke-Expression

🫀 Oh My Posh

Oh My Posh is a framework for customizing the terminal, allowing you to tailor the appearance and functionality of PowerShell.

scoop bucket add versions
scoop bucket add extras
scoop bucket add main
scoop install main/oh-my-posh
New-Item -Path $PROFILE -Type File -Force
notepad $PROFILE

At the beginning of the file, add:

oh-my-posh init pwsh | Invoke-Expression

Then restart the terminal to enjoy the new look.

🎨 Themes in Oh My Posh

In order to change the theme, replace the added line with:

$theme = "catppuccin"

oh-my-posh init pwsh --config "C:\Users\$env:USERNAME\scoop\apps\oh-my-posh\current\themes\$theme.omp.json" | Invoke-Expression

🔍 Autocompletion

Autocompletion in PowerShell can be configured by adding the appropriate modules. To do this, we can use Scoop to install the PSReadLine module, which provides autocompletion and syntax highlighting:

if (Get-Module -ListAvailable -Name PSReadLine) {
    Import-Module PSReadLine
    Set-PSReadLineOption -PredictionSource History
    Set-PSReadLineOption -PredictionViewStyle ListView
    Set-PSReadLineOption -EditMode Emacs
}

🤖 Nerd Fonts

For Nerd Fonts, those that are use by Oh My Posh, you can download and install them from the official Nerd Fonts website: here or directly via Scoop:

scoop install nerd-fonts

🦄 WSL

To install WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), run the following command in PowerShell as Administrator:

wsl --install

This command will install WSL along with the default Linux distribution (usually Ubuntu). After installation, you can launch your Linux environment from the Start menu.

Or do not install any distribution, because once you install Docker via Rancher Desktop, it will install its own WSL distribution called rancher-desktop and better would be to use e.g. Alpine or Debian inside container instead of raw Ubuntu.

🐳 Docker

To install Docker on Windows, you can use Rancher Desktop, which provides a simple way to run Docker containers on Windows using WSL 2, where you can set to use containerd or moby.

The typical Docker Desktop is not free anymore for business use, but maybe your company has a license for it.

You can download Rancher Desktop from its official website: here.

🛠️ Build Tools

The core Windows packages that should be installed, are:

  • Visual Studio (Community is free)
  • Visual Studio Code
  • MSVC VS C++ x64/x86 Build Tools
  • Windows SDK
  • Net 9.0 SDK

Those, while installed, will provide you with the necessary build tools like cl, nmake, msbuild, etc.

🧂 Others

Few other dependencies that are useful to have installed:

scoop install git gpg gopass lazygit curl ripgrep fzf winfetch btop w64devkit gcc openjdk nano msys2

🪢 DevOps CLI's

scoop install azure-cli kubectl kubectx k9s helm helmfile terraform opentofu \
terragrunt tenv git gh glab pulumi jq yq vault packer nerdctl stern

🪬 Database drivers

👾 Oracle SQL

From Oracle website, download the Instant Client Package - Basic and Instant Client Package - ODBC for Windows x64.

And unzip them somewhere, e.g. C:\oracle\instantclient_19_14.

Then add this path to the PATH environment variable.

🐦‍⬛ Microsoft SQL Server

For MSSQL and its ODBC, download and install the Microsoft ODBC Driver for SQL Server from the official Microsoft website.

⚗️ Languages runtimes

Core languages used by SRE/DevOps engineers, are mainly Bash or Powershell, Python, Ruby or Go and Typescript (Pulumi IaC).

So to install them, use:

scoop install python ruby go nvm bun

While for Python and Ruby, you should install additional packages, like:

pip install -U pip setuptools wheel uv

In order to set-up Node environment, use nvm:

nvm install 22
nvm use 22
npm install -g typescript yarn @github/copilot @pulumi/pulumi

For bun, just install it via scoop as above and then use it to install packages per project basis.

The only thing is that you should add @types packages manually when needed, as bun does not install them automatically yet:

bun add -d @types/bun

Sometimes, you may need also Rust 🦀 for some CLIs or build tools:

scoop install rustup
rustup install stable

🐖 Powershell Profile Scripts

You can also add few core functions to your Powershell profile script, to make your life easier, like:

function tokenGenerateNew {
    param(
        [int]$Length = 32
    )
    $Bytes = New-Object 'Byte[]' ($Length)
    [System.Security.Cryptography.RandomNumberGenerator]::Create().GetBytes($Bytes)
    $Token = [Convert]::ToBase64String($Bytes)
    $Token = $Token -replace '[^a-zA-Z0-9]', ''
    return $Token.Substring(0, $Length)
}

function tokenEncode {
    param(
        [string]$InputString
    )
    $Bytes = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($InputString)
    $Base64String = [Convert]::ToBase64String($Bytes)
    return $Base64String
}

function tokenDecode {
    param(
        [string]$Base64String
    )
    $Bytes = [Convert]::FromBase64String($Base64String)
    $DecodedString = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetString($Bytes)
    return $DecodedString
}

Remember to keep it simple and avoid overloading it with too many functions, as it may slow down the terminal startup time.

So better would be to place more complex functions in modules and import them when needed.

Happy SRE/DevOpsing on Windows! 🚀

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