Exchange Management Tools - Remote Server

[sister_annex]

Ok this has been bugging me for days and I cannot for the life of me figure it out...

 

We run exchange 2010 (all services on one server), the Management Console and the Management Shell work perfectly fine on the local server.

 

The issue I am having is that I am trying to get the Exchange Management Console to work on a remote server.

 

The tools are installed, but every time I run the Exchange managment console, it tries to connect and I get the following message:

 

 

When running the Exchange Managment Shell I get the following also:

 

I have tried various suggestions from the interwebs including all the steps here: Blogs - Exchange Team Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

 

Really beating my head against the wall on this - any help will be appreciated

 

Cheers

[jamesreedersmith]

Is the computer you are connecting from a domain member and are you logged on as a user with domain and exchange rights, is the firewall on on the exchange server?

[sister_annex]

Is the computer you are connecting from a domain member and are you logged on as a user with domain and exchange rights, is the firewall on on the exchange server?

 

Domain Member - Yes

User with Domain Rights/ Exchange Rights - Yes

Firewall on - No

 

I log on to the remote server with the same account that works fine on the local exchange server

[pete]

Does non-Exchange powershell remoting work? Try something like:

 

Invoke-Command -Computer NameofServer -ScriptBlock {"C:\Program Files" | Get-Child-Item}

 

Which will show you the (first-level) contents of C:\Program Files on the remote machine.

Edited October 22, 2014 by pete

[sister_annex]

hmmm... no it doesn't

Edited October 22, 2014 by sister_annex

[pete]

Cool, so now you know it's not an exchange issue.

 

From an elevated PowerShell prompt on the exchange server, what does:

 

Enable-PSRemoting -Force

 

show? If it's already configured, it'll tell you.

 

psexec \\computername -s -d powershell “Enable-PSRemoting -Force” 

 

will do the same thing remotely (if you've got the sysinternals tools).

Edited October 22, 2014 by pete

[sister_annex]

Cool, so now you know it's not an exchange issue.

 

Thanks @pete your time is appreciated! Yes it does very much look that way!

 

This is what I get from the Powershell prompt

 

WinRM already is set up to receive requests on this machine.
WinRM already is set up for remote management on this machine.

 

[sister_annex]

Just as an aside our Exchange 2010 server is running on 2008R2 and the server I am trying to remote manage from is 2012...

[pete]

My powershell-remoting notes from our wiki say:

 

Requirements are:

 

You have admin credentials for the remote computer

You have Powershell 3.0 or better installed on the remote computer.

CAUTION: On systems that have both Windows PowerShell 3.0 and the Windows PowerShell 2.0 engine, do not use Windows PowerShell 2.0 to run the Enable-PSRemoting and Disable-PSRemoting cmdlets. The commands might appear to succeed, but the remoting is not configured correctly. Remote commands, and later attempts to enable and disable remoting, are likely to fail.

If you're installing Powershell 4.0, the patch requires a reboot.

 

Which makes me think you've got Powershell 2.0 on the exchange server (or 2 and 3) and WinRM may need looking at again.

[sister_annex]

You are on to something there... I have just run your previous instructions again

 

 

Invoke-Command -Computer NameofServer -ScriptBlock {"C:\Program Files" | Get-Child-Item}

 

 

this time on another 2008R2 server and it has run perfectly fine (same credentials and all that)

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

You are on to something there... I have just run your previous instructions again

 

 

Invoke-Command -Computer NameofServer -ScriptBlock {"C:\Program Files" | Get-Child-Item}

 

 

this time on another 2008R2 server and it has run perfectly fine (same credentials and all that)

[pete]

So:

 

2008R2 > 2008R2 (generally) works?

2008R2 > 2008R2 exchange works?

2012 > 2008R2 doesn't?

 

IIRC 2012 ships with remoting enabled by default, but I'm not sure if it's "just works" or "you still need to change a few things".

 

Typing

$PSVersionTable.PSVersion

in a PowerShell window will show you what versions of PowerShell you have installed.

Edited October 22, 2014 by pete