| --- |
| title: Windows Users Guide |
| layout: documentation |
| documentation: true |
| --- |
| |
| This page guides how to set up environment on Windows for Apache Storm. |
| |
| ## Symbolic Link |
| |
| Starting at 1.0.0, Apache Storm utilizes `symbolic link` to aggregate log directory and resource directory into worker directory. |
| Unfortunately, `creating symbolic link` on Windows needs non-default privilege, so users should configure it manually to make sure Storm processes can create symbolic link on runtime. |
| Depending on the Windows version (i.e. non-professional), setting symbolic links privilege by a security policy is not possible since the tool is not installed. |
| |
| When creating a symbolic link is not possible, the Supervisor process will stop as soon as it tries to start workers since the permission exception is considered a fatal error. |
| |
| Below pages (MS technet) guide how to configure that policy to the account which Storm runs on. |
| |
| * [How to Configure Security Policy Settings](https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn452420.aspx) |
| * [Create symbolic links](https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn221947.aspx) |
| |
| One tricky point is, `administrator` group already has this privilege, but it's activated only process is run as `administrator` account. |
| So if your account belongs to `administrator` group (and you don't want to change it), you may want to open `command prompt` with `run as administrator` and execute processes within that console. |
| If you don't want to execute Storm processes directly (not on command prompt), please execute processes with `runas /user:administrator` to run as administrator account. |
| |
| Starting with Windows 10 Creators Update, it will be possible to activate a Developer Mode that supports creating symbolic links without `run as administrator` |
| [Symlinks in Windows 10!](https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/12/02/symlinks-windows-10/) |
| |
| Alternatively you can disable usage of symbolic links by setting the config `storm.disable.symlinks` to `true` |
| on Nimbus and all of the Supervisor nodes. This will also disable features that require symlinks. Currently this is only downloading |
| dependent blobs, but may change in the future. Some topologies may rely on symbolic links to resources in the current working directory of the worker that are |
| created as a convienence, so it is not a 100% backwards compatible change. |
