Restart IIS on remote machine

Question

How can restart IIS on a remote machine?

I know the IP address and administrator user\'s user name and password information.

I am using C#

Answer 1

Simplest will be iisreset <servername>

Run command prompt as admin and execute the command.

Example : If server name is SRVAPP then command will be iisreset SRVAPP

Answer 2

I tried the PowerShell-based method but I kept getting the following error:

Connecting to remote server <TARGET-HOST> failed with the following error message : The WinRM client cannot process the request.

I finally found out that I needed to add the target node as a TrustedHosts in the source node and vice-versa. If you run into that same issue, you can fix it by opening an elevated Command Prompt and typing the following commands:

From the PC you'll use to issue the commands:

powershell
winrm set winrm/config/client '@{TrustedHosts="TARGET-HOST"}'

From the destination PC (the one with IIS):

powershell
winrm set winrm/config/client '@{TrustedHosts="SOURCE-HOST"}'

(replacing TARGET-HOST and SOURCE-HOST with your servers hostnames or IP addresses). As soon as you do that you can issue any remote PowerShell command, such as:

IIS Stop:

powershell invoke-command -computername "TARGET-HOST" -scriptblock {iisreset /STOP}

IIS Start:

powershell invoke-command -computername "TARGET-HOST" -scriptblock {iisreset /START}

IIS Restart:

powershell invoke-command -computername "TARGET-HOST" -scriptblock {iisreset /RESTART}

... and more.

For an extensive review of this issue you can also read this post on my blog.

Answer 3

You could use sc, as Thomas Franke suggested:

sc \\RemoteServer stop iisadmin
sc \\RemoteServer start w3svc

or SysInternals' psexec. The PsTools suite is useful for these scenarios.

psexec \\RemoteServer iisreset

Answer 4

You could use the "sc" command in order to control the iis-service on the remote machine.

sc \\RemoteServer stop [iis-service-name]

Use

sc help

in order to get a list of possible arguments.

Also take a look at a microsoft kb-article on your subject.

Answer 5

The following POSH script will allow you to asynchronously reset a set of machines remotely (very handy when working with a large set):

$a = Get-Content "c:\OneMachineNamePerLine.txt"

foreach($line in $a)
{

    Start-Job -ScriptBlock {
        iisreset $line
    }
}

Answer 6

How remote is remote? You could just execute Shutdown.exe from your c# code? If that's not possible (firewalls etc) then the next best would probably be putting a service on there that you could call remotely (and securely!) that shuts the machine down.