Installing the WorkSpaces Management appliance from AWS Marketplace

Please ensure you are logged on to your AWS Console. Proceed to the AWS Marketplace and search for ‘Workspaces Manager Appliance’. Alternatively, click this link AWS Marketplace to take you there.

When found, select ‘Continue to subscribe’.

You now need to subscribe to the software. Select ‘Accept Terms’.

Now, select ‘Continue to Configuration’.

Select the region that you want your WorkSpaces Manager appliance to reside. Then select ‘Continue to Launch’.

From ‘Choose Action’, select ‘Launch CloudFormation’. Then select ‘Launch’.

On the next section, accept all entries and select ‘Next’.

You now specify your parameters for your stack configuration. Enter:

Stack Name: Your stack name. Call it something that is relevant for your own identification, like CF-WSM (recommendation is to start the object always by the acronym of the service used in AWS, like CloudFormation can be set to “CF”)
Instance Type: Leave a t3a.medium (in a drop-down list) as they should be sufficient to run WorkSpaces Manager. We recommend t3a.large for bigger deployments but a t3a.medium is suitable for the majority of installations.
Key Name: You may have multiple key names under your IAM account for your own account. Select one to provide you with the local administrator credentials to the WorkSpaces Manager EC2 instance further down the line

*NOTE: You will need the associated key file to be able to decrypt the password later, so we recommend that the key is added to Secrets Manager for future usage

RDPLocation: Enter a CIDR from which both WorkSpaces and Admins will access WorkSpaces Manager. You can amend this later
Subname: Select a Private subnet for your WorkSpaces Manager to reside (choose from a drop-down list)
VPCName: Select the VPC in which you wish to place the WorkSpaces Manager in (choose from a drop-down list)

You now configure your stack options.

Tags: You can tag the resources if you wish, strongly recommended
Permissions: Leave this blank as permissions will be created for you
Advanced Options: Keep all options as default. You can enter an SNS Topic ARN to notify you of when the stack is created, but this is not necessary. You will know when it is finished as the WorkSpaces Manager will appear as an EC2 instance in the console

Then select ‘Next’.

You will now find yourself at the ‘Review’ screen. Scroll down to the bottom, select the acknowledgement, and then select ‘Create Stack’.

You will now return to the stack status screen where you can see the progress of the WorkSpaces Manager stack.

You can view the tasks as they are being performed. When the stack creation is complete, the status will change from ‘CREATE_IN_PROGRESS’ to ‘CREATE_COMPLETE’. The stack creation takes around 3-4 minutes to complete.

If you now view your EC2 instances in the region that you chose to install WorkSpaces Manager, you will see the WorkSpaces Manager instance. Give this around 5-10 minutes for the Status Checks to finish and for local administrator password to be auto generated.

Now, RDP to your instance using the Private IP assigned to the instance using the local administrator password and using the KeyName and associated keyfile that you specified in the Stack Details section above. If you cannot RDP to the instance, you need to ensure you are connecting from a device within the network CIDR that you specified in RDPLocation in the Stack Details section above.