Both of these are far more detailed and involved than is necessary to get up and running with PowerShell PSSession commands. And that's what I really like to use, since I'm predominantly an interactive PowerShell user. So, here's the basics to use PowerShell from your desktop to connect to a server (or other workstation) and run commands on that server or workstation. (note: this assumes a domain environment) First, make sure PowerShell Remoting is enabled on the target server or workstation. For this one command, you'll need to open a Remote Desktop session on the target server or workstation, and open a PowerShell window As Administrator. PSH> Enable-PSRemoting -force That's it. The Enable-PSRemoting command needs to be run once only on a computer to enable it to receive commands. Now, the basic steps for interactive PSSessions are:
To create a new session on machine "srv1": PSH> $srv1 = New-PSSession srv1 Then, to actually use the session: PSH> Enter-PSSession $srv1 [SRV1]: PS C:\Users\Charlie\Documents> And that's it - you now have an open PowerShell command window on the remote computer, srv1. Any commands you enter there will be processed on the remote computer. When you want to return to the local computer, simply type exit. To run a script or command against a remote computer, you can also use Invoke-Command. So, using our session from above, I can even run a CMD command: PSH> Invoke-Command -session $srv1 -script {cmd /c dir c:\ } Volume in drive C has no label. Volume Serial Number is 8053-7E1F
Directory of c:\
17/12/2010 09:03 AM <DIR> ExchangeSetupLogs 03/12/2010 07:29 AM 559 HPDIU.log 08/11/2010 02:31 PM <DIR> inetpub 13/07/2009 07:20 PM <DIR> PerfLogs 08/12/2010 07:21 AM <DIR> Program Files 26/12/2010 02:56 PM <DIR> Program Files (x86) 02/12/2010 02:25 PM 1,233 redircopy.txt 02/12/2010 02:21 PM <DIR> StorageReports 13/02/2011 05:49 PM <DIR> temp 12/02/2011 07:25 AM <DIR> Users 03/12/2010 05:05 PM <DIR> VHDs 13/02/2011 03:25 PM <DIR> Windows 02/12/2010 02:39 PM <DIR> WSUS 2 File(s) 1,792 bytes 11 Dir(s) 112,803,667,968 bytes free
PSH> There are lots of other ways you can use PowerShell v2 Remoting, but this should get you started.