What is WinRM?

What is WinRM?


What is WinRM?

WinRM, for those of you not in the know, is really the Microsoft answer to an age-old problem in the Windows world–remote command and task execution.  It’s the Windows equivalent of the Unix rsh, a native implementation of the PsExec (albeit, with the added complexity that seeps into nearly all Microsoft technologies).  It’s built on SOAP, so it’s intended to be firewall-friendly.

The quick guide to enabling it:

On a server you wish to enable WinRM management, open an elevated command or PowerShell prompt and run winrm quickconfig.  Answer “Yes” to create the listener and open the necessary ports in the Windows Firewall.

Once that’s done, you may need to set the configuration to allow you to connect to it and issue remote commands.  You can do this by by opening an elevated command or PowerShell prompt and entering one of the following command examples:

Add a single trusted remote management host

winrm set winrm/config/client '@{TrustedHosts="server1"}'

Add multiple trusted remote management hosts

winrm set winrm/config/client '@{TrustedHosts="server1,server2"}'

Make every host trusted (not advised)

winrm set winrm/config/client '@{TrustedHosts="*"}'

Now What?

Let’s say you want to execute a command against a WinRM host.  To do this, use the command winrs.

For example, to open a command prompt on server2, you would run:

winrs -r:server2 cmd

For a whole bunch of other stuff you can do with WinRM, please see the following (much more technical) articles:




Happy remoting!

Published by Aaron Guilmette


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