How to access WinRM in C#

Question

I\'d like to create a small application that can collect system information (Win32_blablabla) using WinRM as opposed to WMI. How can i do that from C#?

The main goal

Answer 1

I've got an article that describes an easy way to run Powershell through WinRM from .NET at http://getthinktank.com/2015/06/22/naos-winrm-windows-remote-management-through-net/.

The code is in a single file if you want to just copy it and it's also a NuGet package that includes the reference to System.Management.Automation.

It auto manages trusted hosts, can run script blocks, and also send files (which isn't really supported but I created a work around). The returns are always the raw objects from Powershell.

// this is the entrypoint to interact with the system (interfaced for testing).
var machineManager = new MachineManager(
    "10.0.0.1",
    "Administrator",
    MachineManager.ConvertStringToSecureString("xxx"),
    true);

// will perform a user initiated reboot.
machineManager.Reboot();

// can run random script blocks WITH parameters.
var fileObjects = machineManager.RunScript(
    "{ param($path) ls $path }",
    new[] { @"C:\PathToList" });

// can transfer files to the remote server (over WinRM's protocol!).
var localFilePath = @"D:\Temp\BigFileLocal.nupkg";
var fileBytes = File.ReadAllBytes(localFilePath);
var remoteFilePath = @"D:\Temp\BigFileRemote.nupkg";
machineManager.SendFile(remoteFilePath, fileBytes);

Hope this helps, I've been using this for a while with my automated deployments. Please leave comments if you find issues.