Restart IIS on remote machine

Question

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

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.

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

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.