Manage Exchange Server Remotely With PowerShell Server

Requirements:

• PowerShell Server
• Microsoft Exchange
• Any SSH Client

Introduction

Microsoft Exchange contains the Exchange Management Shell which is built on Windows PowerShell technology. The Exchange Management Shell contains a command-line interface, a PowerShell snap-in, and the Exchange Cmdlets which allow you to perform numerous administrative tasks via scripts.

This tutorial will cover setting up the PowerShell Server, connecting to the server, and running Exchange commands. Please note that this tutorial does not provide steps on how to setup Microsoft Exchange or how to perform extensive adminstrative tasks. Rather it provides information about creating a secure SSH connection (using the PowerShell Server), so that you can remotely manage Exchange using the Exchange Cmdlets.

Prerequisites

The first step is to install Microsoft Exchange. This tutorial does not cover the necessary steps needed to install Exchange, but there are a variety of tutorials on the web that provide detailed steps about this process. Microsoft’s TechNet site contains detailed information about Exchange, which you may find helpful.

Once you have Microsoft Exchange installed, you will then want to download and install the PowerShell Server on the same machine where you have Exchange installed.

Setting up the PowerShell Server

For the sake of this tutorial, we are going to use the default connection settings for the server (i.e. port number 22 and password authentication). Therefore you should not have to make any adjustments to the settings, after it is installed, to make the initial connection. First thing you will need to do is open the PowerShell Server. This can be done by running the “PowerShellServer.exe” file, which can be accessed from either the Start Menu (under PowerShell Server) or from the installation directory (the default location is: C:\Program Files\nsoftware\PowerShell Server 2016). Once the server window is displayed, you can start the server by clicking the “Start” button in the top left corner of the window. The server should now be started and waiting for connection requests.

Note you can adjust the connection settings accordingly based on your requirements. More information about the various settings and configurations can be found within the help file installed along with the server.

Connecting to PowerShell Server

Now that the PowerShell Server is listening for connections, you will want to start an SSH client on a remote machine. In this tutorial, I used PuTTY to connect and execute commands on the PowerShell Server. However you can use a variety of SSH clients such as our SSH Components.

First you will want to run PuTTY and enter the server Host Name where the PowerShell Server is running. You will also want to ensure that Port is set to 22 (provided that you have not altered the setting within the PowerShell Server) and that the Connection Type is set to SSH.

You can then click “Open”, which starts the connection to the PowerShell Server. Note you will see a message window asking you if you would like to accept the server certificate or not (provided that the server certificate is not already trusted by your machine). By default the server’s certificate will most likely not be trusted, as the server is using a self-created test certificate. Therefore you will want to select “Yes” to trust the certificate. You will then be prompted for a login name, which by default will be a user contained within the Administrators group on the machine where the PowerShell Server is running. Therefore you can enter the login name in the form: [Domain][Username]. You will then be prompted to specify the password for the entered login name. If the login was successful, you will see the Login Banner displayed along with a PowerShell-like prompt. You can then begin entering PowerShell commands to be run on the remotely connected machine.

Running Exchange Cmdlets

Now that we are successfully connected to the PowerShell Server, we can begin to work with the Exchange Cmdlets to remotely manage an Exchange Server. The Exchange Cmdlets are not loaded by default when a new instance of PowerShell is started. Therefore we will first need to add the snap-in for the Cmdlets. This can be done by executing the Add-PSSnapin cmdlet.

For Exchange 2007:

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Exchange.Management.PowerShell.Admin

For Exchange 2010:

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Exchange.Management.PowerShell.E2010

For Exchange 2013:

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Exchange.Management.PowerShell.SnapIn