How to programmatically/remotely execute a program in EC2 Windows instance

Question

I'd like to launch an EC2 Windows instance, upload an EXEecutable & execute it (all in an automated fashion, this is important)

So far I was able to programmatically launch EC2 Windows instance & get its parameters (password / IP), now I'd like to find a way to upload this Executable (from my Windows machine or from my other EC2 linux instance) & run it.

I thought about launching an RDP connection & using a macro software to upload & execute the file, but based on previous experiences this is a poor/fragile approach to say the least.

I also thought about uploading this EXE to a server, then do something like this on Windows:

wget http://www.domain.com/my-file.exe

Except that Windows doesn't have wget!

So my question is: is there a way to programmatically upload & execute an EXEcutable in EC2 Windows instance?

Answer 1

An alternative approach is to use Windows powershell and WinRM - it allows for remote execution, a bit like ssh on Linux.

Here is a sample of a powershell script you can run on the client to remote execute a script (taken from: https://github.com/CloudifySource/cloudify/blob/master/esc/src/main/resources/clouds/ec2-win/upload/bootstrap-client.ps1):

param ([string]$target, [string]$username, [string]$password, [string]$command)

$ErrorActionPreference="Stop"

# Set up the password
$securePassword = ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force $password
$cred = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential $username, $securePassword

Write-Host "Connecting to management service of $target"
Connect-WSMan -Credential $cred $target 

set-item WSMan:\$target\Client\TrustedHosts -Value * -Force
set-item WSMan:\$target\Shell\MaxMemoryPerShellMB -Value 0 -Force

Write-Host Invoking command on Remote host $target
Invoke-Command -ComputerName $target -Credential $cred  -ScriptBlock {  
    Invoke-Expression $args[0]
} -ArgumentList $command
Write-Host "Command finished"

You can run this command from your own script with the following command:

powershell.exe -inputformat none -File PATH_TO_SCRIPT -target TARGET_IP -password PASSWORD -username USERNAME -command COMMAND_TO_EXECUTE

You should probably quote your strings, especially the password and command, as these will usually have special characters that powershell can interpret as something else.

The WinRM service is on by default on the EC2 Amazon Windows AMIs. All you need to do is open port 5985 (the WinRM port) in your security group.

Finally, if you have never used powershell remoting on your client machine before, there are a couple of commands you should execute to set it up (you only need to do this once):

set-item WSMan:\localhost\Client\TrustedHosts -Value * -Force
set-item WSMan:\localhost\Shell\MaxMemoryPerShellMB -Value 0 -Force
Enable-PSRemoting
Set-ExecutionPolicy unrestricted

Make sure to run these as an Administrator.