Launch command on remote Windows machine, given admin credentials
- by Bilal Aslam
I have a Windows Server 2008 instance on Amazon EC2 (Amazon's cloud compute platform, which provides VMs in the cloud). It has an external IP, and I have an admin account on the box. I would like to 'bootstrap' this instance remotely i.e. I want to run commands to download, install and configure apps on it, all without having to log on even once.
I have figured out how to do this to a remote, domain-joined computer using WMI. I can even use psexec to get what I want, as long as the remote computer is part of the domain. However, I have NOT been able to do for a remote computer on EC2. Here are some specific restrictions:
1) The remote computer is not part of my domain, hence no Kerberos
2) The remote computer does not have a cert I trust, or vice versa
I am sure I am running into to some auth/trust restriction. Is there any way I can run a single command on the remote, given that I have admin privileges? I'm not tied down to using WMI, but I do need to run a command somehow. Feels like this should be a solved problem.