How to execute an installer executable on a remote machine with Powershell?

Question

I'm trying to automate the upgrading of Spotfire BI system on our Windows servers.

The instructions show a command that can be used to silently install which states the location of the executable file followed by all the required options/parameters as shown with this example:

install.exe INSTALLDIR="<node manager installation dir>" NODEMANAGER_REGISTRATION_PORT=9080 NODEMANAGER_COMMUNICATION_PORT=9443 SERVER_NAME=SpotfireServerName SERVER_BACKEND_REGISTRATION_PORT=9080 SERVER_BACKEND_COMMUNICATION_PORT=9443 NODEMANAGER_HOST_NAMES=NodeManagerHostNames NODEMANAGER_HOST=NodeManagerHost -silent -log "C:\Users\user\Log file.log"

This does work, and as long as it preceded by the call operator (&), it runs well in PowerShell. However, I can't get it to work when running this on a remote server:

 function nodeManagerUpgrade {
    Param([String]$ServiceName1,
    [String]$InstallDirectory,
    [String]$HostNames1
    )

    Stop-Service $ServiceName1

    # this is the line that fails
    & "X:/downloads/spotfire/install.exe" INSTALLDIR="$InstallDirectory" NODEMANAGER_REGISTRATION_PORT=17080 NODEMANAGER_COMMUNICATION_PORT=17443 SERVER_NAME=localhost SERVER_BACKEND_REGISTRATION_PORT=19080 SERVER_BACKEND_COMMUNICATION_PORT1=9443 NODEMANAGER_HOST_NAMES=$HostNames1 -silent -log "install.log"
} 

 Invoke-Command -ComputerName $NodeIP -ScriptBlock ${function:nodeManagerUpgrade} -argumentlist ($ServiceName,$InstallDirectory,$HostNames) -credential $credentials 

I can run the code contained in the function directly on the remote server and it works correctly. However, when I try and run it from the central server through WinRM/Invoke-Command within a function, it fails giving me this error:

The term 'X:/downloads/spotfire/install.exe' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet

Is it possible to run an executable using PowerShell on a remote server?

Answer 1

Your executable path is based on a drive letter , X: .

However, in remote sessions mapped drives (drives connected to.network shares) aren't available by default, so you have two options:

• Establish a (temporary) drive mapping with New-PSDrive before calling the executable (eg, $null = New-PSDrive X FileSystem \\foo\bar )

• More simply, use the full UNC path of the target executable (eg
  & \\foo\bar\downloads\spotfire\install.exe... )

If the target executable isn't actually accessible from the remote session, you'd have to copy it there first, which requires establishing a remote session explicitly and using
Copy-Item -ToSession - see the docs for an example.