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I've already shown you how to remotely manage your Server Core installations of Windows Server Core using the Remote Desktop Protocol, but using Windows Remote Management (WinRM, Microsoft implementation of WS-Management) in combination with WinRS might prove to be even more useful for day to day administration.

About WS-Management

WS-Management is a specification of a SOAP-based protocol for the management of servers, devices, applications and more. The specification is based on DMTF open standards and Internet standards for Web Services and was published in March, 2005 by a group of companies, including AMD, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and others.

WS-Management provides a common way for systems to access and exchange management information across the IT infrastructure. The specification is quite rich, supporting much more than get/set of simple variables, and in that it is closer to WBEM or Netconf than to SNMP. A mapping of the DMTF-originated Common Information Model into WS-Management was also defined.

Remote Shell

One of the most common uses for Windows Remote Management is the Remote Shell, (WinRS) that can be used to execute a program on a remote host.

Other uses

Windows Remote Management is not a stranger to this blog. I wrote a blogpost 6 months ago on event forwarding and already looked into WinRM. You might find your Windows Remote Management is already enabled after following those directions.

This blog post will be focusing on using WinRM, combined with WinRS.

WinRM

Windows Remote Management is the server part answering the Remote Shell. In Windows Server 2008 it is not enabled by default, which is good from a security point of view.

Determining whether WinRM is configured or not

Windows Remote Management is installed by default on Windows Server 2008 and the WinRM service is set to start (delayed) automatically. The only way to determine whether Windows Remote Management is installed is by examining the output of the following command:

WinRM enumerate winrm/config/listener

or (shorter, but with the same effect)

WinRM e winrm/config/listener

When this command has no output, it means no listeners are configured and Windows Remote Management is not configured.

Enabling Windows Remote Management

Using the command line

To enable Windows Remote Shell on a server running a Server Core installation, type the following command at the command prompt of the Server Core box:

WinRM quickconfig

or (shorter, but with the same effect)

WinRM qc

The command questions whether you really want to enable Windows Remote Management:

WinRM is not set up to allow remote access to this machine for management.
The following changes must be made: Create a WinRM listener on HTTP://* to accept WS-Man requests to any IP on this machine
Make these changes [y/n]?

Press y to continue or n to cancel.

This command will perform a couple of actions. First of all it will check whether the Windows Remote Management service is started and set to start automatically. After that it creates listeners for all the network connections to accept Windows Remote Shell connections with default settings. It will also open up port 80 in the Windows Firewall.

If configuration is successful, the following output is displayed:

WinRM has been updated for remote management. WinRM service type changed to delayed auto start. WinRM service started. Created a WinRM listener on HTTP://* to accept WS-Man requests to any IP on this machine.

Using Group Policies

When you place Server Core boxes in a separate Organizational Unit in your Active Directory environment you can manage Windows Remote Management centrally.

Look for the Windows Remote Management and Windows Remote Shell Group Policy Objects (GPOs) under Administrative Templates and Windows Components.
Do not forget to also open up TCP 80 on the firewall.

Default settings

The default settings of Windows Remote Management might not suit your needs. You can change on which network interfaces Windows Remote Management listens, change the URI's and change whether WinRM will use HTTP (TCP 80) or HTTPS (TCP 443)

While WinRM listens on port 80 by default, it doesn't mean traffic is unencrypted. Traffic by default is only accepted by WinRM when it is encrypted using the Negotiate or Kerberos SSP. Enabling HTTPS is not a security measure persé. It is needed when you want to use the Windows Remote Shell (WinRS) from a host that is not in the same domain as the Server Core box. (unless you use the trick below)

Windows Remote Shell is enabled by default within Windows Remote Management. For Windows Remote Shell the default settings are:

Maximum of 5 concurrent users
Maximum of 2 shells per user
Maximum of 80MB memory usage per shell
Maximum of 5 processes per shell

Disabling Windows Remote Management

To disable Windows Remote Management you need to remove the listener. The following command can be used:

WinRM delete winrm/config/listener?IPAdress=*+Transport=HTTP

WinRS

On another computer, at a command prompt, use WinRS.exe to run commands on a server running a Server Core installation. For example, type:

winrs -r:ServerName cmd.exe

Where ServerName is the name of the server running a Server Core installation with Windows Remote Management. This will result in a remote prompt where you can happily type away your commands.

Tips and tricks

Workaround for non-domain situations

When the Server Core box and the remote host are not members of the same domain you can't connect to the Server Core box using WinRS, because of the built-in security measures. Run the following commands to lower security:

Note:
You seriously cripple the built-in security of Windows Server 2008 after running the following commands. Only apply these commands to test situations.

On the Windows server Core box

Run the following commands on the console of the Server Core box to lower security:

WinRM set winrm/config/service/auth @{Basic="true"}
WinRM set winrm/config/client @{TrustedHosts="<local>"}
WinRM set winrm/config/client @{TrustedHosts="RemoteHost"}

Where RemoteHost is the host you want to be able to connect to the server.

On the remote host

Start the Command Prompt with elevated privileges. On machines with User Account Control enabled this is easily achieved by pressing the Start button, typing cmd and press CTRL and SHIFT together with Enter to run the command. Run the following commands on the remote host to lower security:

WinRM set winrm/config/service/auth @{Basic="true"}
WinRM set winrm/config/client @{TrustedHosts="<local>"}
WinRM set winrm/config/client @{TrustedHosts="ServerName"}

Where ServerName is the name of the server running a Server Core installation with Windows Remote Management.

To open the Remote Shell use the following command:

winrs -r:"ServerName": –u:Domain\Username –p:Password cmd.exe

Where Domain\Username is the name of an account with administrative rights on the server running a Server Core installation with Windows Remote Management and Password is the password for the account.

Trick to get the hostname displayed

Using the Windows Remote Shell might get confusing pretty fast, since the prompt doesn't show where you're connected to or whether you're connected at all. There are some giveaways though:

When you type exit your command window doesn't close
The WinRS command is displayed in the title of your command prompt window

This can become very painful when you decide to shutdown a server and turn off the wrong server accidentally…

Arlindo Alves, the Belgian IT Pro Evangelist, has a good trick to display some extra information on the command prompt, which also works when using the Windows Remote Shell. I suggest you read his blog post on it. It entails adding an Extended String value named prompt to the following registry key:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment

He fills his prompt with all kinds of stuff (which doesn't seem to get passed through completely using WinRS) but I simply add the following data to the value:

[IdentificationString]$s$p$g

Where IdentificationString is an identification string that accurately describes what the server is all about. (which in my case differs from the hostname)

Concluding

Windows Remote Management and the Windows Remote Shell are really good tools and can make your life as a systems administrators much easier. In the light of Server Core this combination of tools will not generate as much traffic as RDP'ing into a Windows Server 2008 box and can be scheduled. This might make it the ideal solution for day to day system management.

Unfortunately security is a real pain in the behind if both machines aren't in the same Active Directory domain. You'll need to type away some commands to make it work.

Arlindo Alves' tip to show the hostname of the server on both the console of the Server Core box and the remote shell might prove to be a real lifesaver.

a blog by Sander Berkouwer

Remotely managing your Server Core using WinRM and WinRS

About WS-Management

Remote Shell

Other uses

WinRM

Determining whether WinRM is configured or not