Enable PowerShell Remoting

I use PowerShell quite a lot to manage servers, especially SQL Servers. So I need to be able to run PowerShell commands remotely.  Fortunately I don't have to worry about this much on Windows Server 2012 and up, because the PowerShell remoting is enabled by default. On the other hand, if an organization deems PowerShell, and PSRemoting in particular, as a security risk and decides to disable it on purpose. that obivoulsly is a different matter. 

And, any earlier versions of Window Server and all versions of the Windows client operating systems (Home Pro etc.), PowerShell remoting is turned off by default. 

To enable PSRemoting:

Connect / RDP into the computer.

Launch the PowerShell with elevated privileges (Run As Administrator).

Run the command:

Enable-PSRemoting –Verbose and –Confirm

I added the -Verbose and -Confirm parameters because by default, the Enable-PSRemoting runs silently with no output whatsoever.  

Here is a link to the Microsoft article for more information on Enable-PSRemoting command:

Enable-PSRemoting

And, if you’re working in a workgroup environment, for example, at home, with no domain controller to handle the security and identity, you need to add list of computers you trust. Here is the article that explains how-to, and troubleshooting other potential issues:

Troubleshoot-PowerShell-Remoting

Once it is enable, here is a basic example how to send command to the remote computer:

Invoke-Command -ComputerName Servername -ScriptBlock {'Hello world'}

That's all nice. But how do you check whether it is already enabled or not? PowerShell doesn't provide a direct way to check whether PSRemoting is enabled or not. Indirectly, you can send a test command to the remote computer. 

Invoke-Command -ComputerName Servername -ScriptBlock {'Hello world'}

If errors out, it will display an ugly error message.  The error per se could be due to a completely different reason, maybe you typed in wrong server name, WinRM service is not running, issues with your credentials, firewall, trusts etc. 

Another, indirect method, is to run the Test-WSMan command to see whether WinRM service is running there or not.

Test-WSMan -ComputerName Servername 

This too doesn't guarantee to tell if issue is with PSRemoting setup.

May be some future version of PowerShell will add a command to check status of PSRemoting locally as well as remotely, in secure ways of course.  I am not too hopeful though because it has been enabled by default since Windows 2012, so Microsoft may not see a need for it or deem it a security risk.