Month: June 2016

Sometimes you need a quick and easy way to run powershell commands on multiple remote machines. This script will read a text file or a list of machines, ping them to ensure they are responding so you don’t waste time on offline machines, then run a remote command.

It times out the ping test at 5ms, which is good for local networks. You may need to increase for slow networks. It also does not establish a profile on the remote machine, which speeds up command processing.

$ScriptBlock = {
#Enter code here
Write-Output $env:computername
}

$computers = @('computer1','computer2')
#$computers = Get-Content c:\temp\computers.txt
$computercount = $computers.Count

foreach($computer in $computers){
    #First check if its even worth it
    $online = Test-Connection $computer -Count 1 -Quiet -TimeToLive 5

    if($online){Write-Output "$computer online with $($computercount) remaining to check"}
           else{Write-Warning "$computer offline with $($computercount) remaining to check"}

     $computercount = $computercount - 1
     
     if($online){
        #Uncomment if input is IP addresses
        #$ComputerName = $computer | ForEach-Object {([system.net.dns]::GetHostByAddress($_)).hostname}
        Write-Output "Found DNS entry $ComputerName for IP $computer"
        $session = New-PSSession -ComputerName $ComputerName -SessionOption (New-PSSessionOption -NoMachineProfile)
        $result = Invoke-Command -session $session -ScriptBlock $ScriptBlock
        Write-Output $result
        Remove-PSSession $session
    }
    else #not online
    {
    }
}

You can comment out the list of names and uncomment the text file to have it read a text file with a list of machine names.

You can uncomment the line that converts an IP address into a name if the input is IP addresses, since powershell won’t let you run against an IP address remotely.

This is also easy to convert into a function, which I’ll add when I have some more time later.