Using PowerShell 2.0 to Execute STSADM Commands Remotely

In version 2.0, PowerShell includes the capability to execute commands on remote computers via the WinRM service. WinRM is Microsoft’s implementation of the WS-Management protocol. We recently took advantage of this capability to automate SharePoint solution upgrades to our integration environment from our build server.

This can be accomplished in four easy steps:

1) Upgrade both the client machine (build server) and the server machine (a web front-end in the integration farm) to use PowerShell 2.0 by installing the Windows Management Framework RC.

2) Run the Enable-PSRemoting cmdlet on both machines to setup WinRM

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3) Create a PowerShell script to execute your desired command remotely using the Invoke-Command cmdlet

The script above will allow you to specify the remote server name at run-time and assumes that the identity executing the script has administrator rights on both the client and server machines.

4) Update your MSBuild targets to include a step to copy WSPs to the integration environment and execute your PowerShell script

This target does the following:

• Copy WSP files to the drop location
• Copy CAB files to the drop location
• Copy WSP files to a file share on the integration server
• Set the PowerShell script execution policy to "RemoteSigned" to allow script execution on the client machine
• Execute the script to run STSADM on the server machine