Using service on Windows

On Windows, Puppet can start, stop, enable, disable, list, query, and configure services. It expects that all services run with the built-in Service Control Manager (SCM) system. It does not support configuring service dependencies, the account to run as, or desktop interaction.

When writing service resources for Windows, remember the following:

• Use the short service name (such as wuauserv) in Puppet, not the display name (such as Automatic Updates).

• Set enable => true to assign a service the Automatic startup type.

• Set enable => manual to assign the Manual startup type.

For example, here is a complete service resource:

service { 'mysql':
  ensure => 'running',
  enable => true,
}

Puppet 7 adds support for managing the logon user and password to the Windows service provider. For example:

service { 'name-of-service':
  ensure              => 'running',
  enable              => 'true', 
  logonaccount   => 'domain\\user', 
  logonpassword => $password,
}

Note that the logonpassword is a sensitive variable.