What are some practical uses cases for Test Kitchen Lifecycle hooks for Windows environment?

The life cycle hooks system allows running commands before, after, or always after any phase of Test Kitchen (create, converge, verify, or destroy). Commands can be run either locally on your workstation (the default) or remotely on the test instance.

These hooks are configured under a new lifecycle: section in kitchen.yml:

lifecycle:
  pre_create: echo before
  post_create:
  - echo after
  - local: echo also after
  - remote: echo after but in the instance
  finally_create:
  - echo run regardless of failure in create

For local commands, you can also pass additional configuration of cwd: to run in a folder relative to the test kitchen root and environment: to pass in additional variables:

lifecycle:
  pre_converge:
  - local: ./setup.sh
    environment:
      API_KEY: asdf1234
    cwd: /my-test-folder

For a Windows instance, it is generally required to create a new user with administrative access for it to be usable in the fleet. This can be achieved by using life cycle hooks in Test Kitchen. Required powershell scripts can be run on the newly spun up Windows instance using a pre_converge hook to provision a user and give it administrative access like below:

platforms:
  - name: windows
    lifecycle:
     pre_create: echo before
     post_create:
     - local: echo also after
     pre_converge:
     - remote: |
               $NewPassword = ConvertTo-SecureString 'P@ssw0rd1' -AsPlainText - Force;
               New-LocalUser -Name "Testuser" -Description "testing user using lifecycle" - Password $NewPassword;
               Add-LocalGroupMember -Group "Administrators" -Member "Testuser";

Another use case can be around Internet Explorer browser. Microsoft has announced that the support for the Internet Explorer desktop application has ended on June 15, 2022 and customers should move to Edge browser.
However, the Windows AMIs still come with with Internet explorer pre installed. Having a non supported software on your system will lead to vulnerabilities. You can uninstall the Internet Explorer on the newly spun up Windows instance using a pre_converge hook like below:

platforms:
  - name: windows
    lifecycle:
     pre_create: echo before
     post_create:
     - local: echo also after
     pre_converge:
     - remote: |
               dism /online /Disable-Feature /FeatureName:Internet-Explorer-Optional-amd64 /quiet /norestart

Restart your Windows instance with a simple recipe and you are good to go.

When a new Windows instance is spun, by default the firewall configuration blocks all incoming and outgoing ICMP traffic. You can enable it using life cycle hook just after creating like below:

platforms:
  - name: windows
    lifecycle:
     pre_create: echo before
     post_create:
     - local: echo also after
     pre_converge:
     - remote: |
               Set-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request - ICMPv4-In)" -enabled True;
               Set-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request - ICMPv4-out)" -enabled True;