To use remoting you'll need to install Powershell V2, unless you're running Windows 2008 R2 or Windows 7, you'll need to grab the latest version of the Windows Management Framework. The Framework includes PowerShell V2 + WINRM. What's WINRM? It's the service included in Windows 2008 and Vista that provides the remoting infrastructue used by PowerShell V2. The installation simply updates the binaries to Windows 2008 R2 and Windows 7 levels. The other thing to note is that Windows 2003 and XP are also now supported. Make sure you have V2 on both your server and client. From a security standpoint, remoting is disabled by default, requires an elevated administrator session to enable and once enabled only allows administrators to connect by default. If you're interested in security I suggest you reading about internals of WINRM and the underlying protocol, WS-MAN. In my environment I use SCCM to push out Microsoft updates to servers and since PowerShell V2 is available as a Windows Update, SCCM can push out the PowerShell V2. Note: Unlike PowerShell V1, V2 requests a reboot, so schedule accordingly.
In PowerShell V1 and V2 some cmdlets and .NET classess have always supported the concept of remote connections. For instance Get-WMIObject takes a computername parameter that does not rely on the new remoting infrastructure; when using the SMO Server class you can specify a remote SQL Server instance; and the same is true with ADO.NET. There are however cases where command-line programs don't provide native support for remoting. In these situations the remoting capabilities of PowerShell V2 is going to be very useful.
Before setting up remoting, like you I searched the internet looking for blogs, article and documentation. Unfortunately I wasn't that lucky when it comes to to finding PowerShell remoting topics. There are blog posts related to WS-MAN, WINRM, WINRS, the WS-MAN provider with different fringe use cases some which will lead you down a rabbit hole describing how to set up remoting in some obscure non-PowerShell, CTP or non-default manner. The only thing I want to do is enable plain vanilla remoting between domain attached computers.
This is unfortunate because setting up remoting is, as we will soon see, very simple. What's surprising is where I found the best documentation on remoting and PowerShell in general, my own PowerShell console using Get-Help. This was one of those duh moments. We know that PowerShell has a verb-noun naming convention and you can discover commands based on naming convention. You can then use get-command to see what you might be looking for and then use get-help to view the documentation. But, what if you're not sure of the command to execute and have a question on concepts? That's when you should, take a look the about_* topics. For remoting specifically look at get-help about_remote_FAQ (to see all about topics run get-help about_*):
Reading through about_remote_FAQ you'll see a heading entiled "HOW TO CONFIGURE YOUR COMPUTER FOR REMOTING", which is exactly what I was looking for.
From the server computer, run (NOTE: You only have to run this command one time to enable remoting. It must be run from an elevated prompt):
PS C:\> enable-psremoting
You should see the following output
WinRM Quick Configuration
Running command "Set-WSManQuickConfig" to enable this machine for remote
management through WinRM service.
This includes:
1. Starting or restarting (if already started) the WinRM service
2. Setting the WinRM service type to auto start
3. Creating a listener to accept requests on any IP address
4. Enabling firewall exception for WS-Management traffic (for http only).
Running command "Set-WSManQuickConfig" to enable this machine for remote
management through WinRM service.
This includes:
1. Starting or restarting (if already started) the WinRM service
2. Setting the WinRM service type to auto start
3. Creating a listener to accept requests on any IP address
4. Enabling firewall exception for WS-Management traffic (for http only).
Do you want to continue?
[Y] Yes [A] Yes to All [N] No [L] No to All Suspend [?] Help
(default is "Y"):Y
WinRM already is set up to receive requests on this machine.
WinRM has been updated for remote management.
Created a WinRM listener on HTTP://* to accept WS-Man requests to any IP on thi
s machine.
Then execute the following command to test remoting (this will connect to the local host):
PS C:\> new-pssession
PS C:\> new-pssession
You should see the following, showing an open local connection:
Id Name ComputerName State ConfigurationName Availability
-- ---- ------------ ----- ----------------- ------------
1 Session1 localhost Opened Microsoft.PowerShell Available
Having completed the server-side setup, next take a look at get-help about_remote. This document will walk you through the three main remoting scenarios of interactive session, remote command, commands in a session:
From the client machine (i.e. your workstation), start an interactive session with the server, in this case Z002 is the remote server.
PS C:\> enter-pssession Z002
[Z002]: PS C:\> $env:computername
Z002
[Z002]: PS C:\> $env:computername
Z002
When finish close the remote connection:
[Z002]: PS C:\> Exit-PSSession
[Z002]: PS C:\> Exit-PSSession
To execute a non-interactive remote command use the invoke-command cmdlet, specifying a remote server:
PS C:\> invoke-command -computer Z002 {$env:computername}
Z002
Z002
The final remoting method is to create a session. This is useful when you want to execute a of series of commands. Create a session object and specify the object ($s) as a parameter to invoke-command. If you have additional commands keep specifying $s as parameter:
$s = new-pssession Z002
PS C:\> invoke-command $s {$env:computername}
Z002Remoting between two domain attached computers is pretty easy. Although the same help topics you'll find in get-help are available online, I'm purposely not linking to them. The help topics available within the PowerShell console are pretty good, so, put down Google/Bing and start using Get-Help!
PS C:\> invoke-command $s {$env:computername}
Z002Remoting between two domain attached computers is pretty easy. Although the same help topics you'll find in get-help are available online, I'm purposely not linking to them. The help topics available within the PowerShell console are pretty good, so, put down Google/Bing and start using Get-Help!
