How to map to shared folder on Google Cloud Compute Engine Windows Server

[Rocky Borrego]

I've set up Windows Server 2016 VM instance on Google Cloud Compute Engine. I've set up a static IP for that server.  I have also set up Public Folder sharing with the proper permissions in Windows OS.

I have created a firewall rule:

name; allow-smb
network; default
source filter; allow from any source (0.0.0.0/0)
allowed protocols and ports; udp:137; udp:138; tcp:139; tcp:445

I am able to access the shares from other local VM instances in GCE using the servers internal IP address as such:  \\<server-internal-ip>\users

But from my local computer, I am not able to access the shares via \\<server-external-ip>\users

I have disabled the Windows firewall for testing.  I have also (very temporarily) set the allowed protocols and ports; tcp:0-65535; udp:0-65535; icmp

Nothing has worked when accessing from local computer.

What I am trying to do, is map the shared network from from the GCE Instance to my local computer.

Is that possible to do?  If yes, any recommendations or suggestions to help me out?

[Taher (Cloud Platform Support)]

Hi Rocky,

That is indeed a very interesting topic.

I have tried to recreate the issue you have mentioned by setting up a Windows 2016 Server VM in GCE and set that as the destination machine. I have also set up another windows machine in a separate GCP project to use it as source machine. Then I have allowed the firewall rule you have described in both the project. I was able to successfully reach destination machine from source machine and also was able to use the shares of destination machines by using your shared command below; which did not require me to change anything from windows firewall even.

\\[destination machine’s IP]\user

So, at this point, my suggestion would be to check to test the same from another project and thus from another source setup. By another source setup, I would mean different source network and different source machine.

Let me know if it helps.

[Daniel Frazee]

Did you ever resolve this? I'm having the same problem.

[Mark Babli]

have you got this issue resolved?

On Monday, January 29, 2018 at 11:05:38 AM UTC-6, Rocky Borrego wrote:

[Mark Babli]

Nope. Not yet! And google seems to not give a damn!

Sent from my iPhone

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[Ashik M]

Hi Mark

Thank you for your comment. 

Generally speaking it is possible to setup a Windows VM and map the static IP range you set and access it from a bare-metal server/host OS. 

My team and I read through every single Google post related to GCE vms and we take all our posters comments to heart. This is an older post where we had a member of the Google team (Taher) already post an answer on 1/29/2018. Proof of concept was provided by Taher showing that it is possible to have 2 Windows VMs talk to one another via static external IP. Our public documentation lists how to use and mentions restrictions with static IPs which I'd also suggest to review [1].

This forum is dedicated for discussion regarding general GCE issues and  is not the best resource to troubleshoot individual GCE instances and debugging firewall/connectivity issues. If you have an issue with GCE or would like to learn more about it, I'd suggest opening a new thread while providing any related documentation related to your question that you already reviewed if your question is technical in nature.

I'd suggest bringing up your individual case on community websites like Serverfault, Stackoverflow or Superuser (even though it's mostly related to Linux) for technical solutions.

I found a related thread that you can bump up here [2]. Hope that helps and thank you for understanding.

[1] https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/ip-addresses/reserve-static-external-ip-address#reserve_new_static

[2] https://superuser.com/questions/990245/how-to-map-to-shared-folder-on-google-cloud-compute-engine-windows-server