Basic PowerShell Remoting

Using remote PowerShell commands is a great way to manage servers. I have been spending more time using Windows 2012 Server Core which makes using remote tools essential. Instead of connecting using Remote Desktop, I try to do everything using PowerShell remotely. In this post, I will show off some extremely basic remote PowerShell commands, Enter-PSSession and Invoke-Command.

Let’s start with a simple command:

Enter-PSSession -ComputerName 'Target'

This amazing command uses your current PowerShell prompt to run PowerShell commands interactively on the remote computer, “Target”. When you are done type exit. With this command you now have the complete might of a fully operational PowerShell!

You can run single or multiple commands using Invoke-Command. Unlike Enter-PSSession, this command is not interactive and will still stream results back to your current prompt. This is great for one line commands like restarting IIS on the remote server “Target”:

Invoke-Command -ComputerName 'Target' -ScriptBlock { iisreset }

Remote commands are allowed by default on Windows Server 2012 and beyond. On older operating systems you can run Enabled-PSRemoting -Force from an Administrator PowerShell prompt on the target machine to enable remoting. You can then test the connection by running the following from another computer:

Invoke-Command -ComputerName 'Target' -ScriptBlock { echo 'hello' }

There are many other commands which natively support remote operations. These commands will often have a ComputerName parameter. You can see a list of commands with the ComputerName parameter by using:

Get-Command -ParameterName 'ComputerName'

Among my favourites is Get-EventLog. It is a great way to look at messages from a remote server without ever leaving the terminal. This example retrieves, formats and displays the last 5 error messages from the remote server “Target”:

Get-EventLog -ComputerName 'Target' -LogName 'Application' -Newest 5 -EntryType 'Error' `
	| Format-List TimeWritten, Message `
	| more

I hope you liked this mini intro to PowerShell remoting. Now go run some commands!