GCE won’t allow me to connect

Question

When I attempt to remote into my server through Windows Remote Desktop I get an error and it won’t allow me to establish connection to my server.

Answer 1

To connect to GCE Windows VM through Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) you need to add a firewall rule that allows to establish TCP connection on RDP port (3389 by default):

gcloud compute firewall-rules create allow-rdp --allow tcp:3389

You can find additional information about RDP connection troubleshooting in GCE documentation.

Answer 2

I would however be a little more careful and only allow it from your own external IP at the very least - or preferably using something like Identity aware proxy (IAP) :

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/cloud-iap-enables-context-aware-access-to-vms-via-ssh-and-rdp-without-bastion-hosts