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Archive for September 8th, 2014

Powershell Web Access

September 8th, 2014 1 comment

I was playing today with new feature called PowerShell Web Access. This feature was brought in Windows Server 2012. It is very easy to install and easy to use. You need to select one server which will act as Web Access PowerShell gateway server. You will be connecting to this server using SSL and this server will use PowerShell remoting to access computers inside your network. So let’s make it work.

First you need to run PowerShell as a admin on gateway server:

PowerShell

Let’s look for Windows features which contain word “shell”:

PowerShell

Windows PowerShell Web Access is the feature we want to install. So let’s install it:

PowerShell

Now we can look at this website to lear more, but let’s play more. Now we have new cmdlets containig word “pswa” (PowerShell Web Access):

PowerShell

We installed pswa feature, but this feature didn’t install its web component into the server. So let’s install pswa Web application using cmdlet Install-PswaWebApplication with parameter -UseTestCertificate. This parameter creates self-signed SSL certificate for this new site, you can use your own certificate. Be aware that this certificate expires in 90 days.

PowerShell

New website was created:

PowerShell

By default no one can use Powershell access gateway. You need to define explicit rules who, where and what can do. For easy test you can use following rule for domain group called GRP_PowerShell_Remote to access all computers with all permissions:

PowerShell

Now everything is prepared. We need to make some changes in network (routers and NAT) to be able to access 443 port on server from Internet. Now when we open site, we can see:

PowerShell Web Access

And now you can work on machines inside your network. It’s secure and reliable:

PowerShell

This is very nice and cute feature.

I hope you will start to use and enjoy it.

Have a nice day.