Stopping & Restarting Services Remotely Using Set-Service

Question

I've got a list of 10-15 services that I routinely need to restart on 6 servers. I have a script that calls a list of services, then calls a list of the servers, and then stops all the services:

$Services = Get-Content -Path "C:\Powershell\Services.txt"
$Machines = Get-Content -Path "C:\Powershell\Machines.txt"
Get-Service -Name $Services -ComputerName $Machines | Set-Service -Status Stopped

I then have another separate script to start them up again:

$Services = Get-Content -Path "C:\Powershell\Services.txt"
$Machines = Get-Content -Path "C:\Powershell\Machines.txt"
Get-Service -Name $Services -ComputerName $Machines | Set-Service -Status Running

I've checked around and can't seem to find a way of putting this into a single script. As I understand, Set-Service only has the ability to Stop, Start & Pause services, not restart them at the same time.

Any ideas? I might be missing something completely obvious.

Answer 1

To restart services simply use Restart-Service:

$Services = Get-Content -Path "C:\Powershell\Services.txt"
$Machines = Get-Content -Path "C:\Powershell\Machines.txt"
Get-Service -Name $Services -ComputerName $Machines | Restart-Service

Since according to the comments PowerShell v6 has removed support for remote access from the *-Service cmdlets you need to resort to Invoke-Command for remote execution when running v6 or newer, like this:

Invoke-Command -Computer $Machines -ScriptBlock {
    Get-Service -Name $using:Services -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |
        Restart-Service
}

or like this:

Invoke-Command -Computer $Machines -ScriptBlock {
    Restart-Service $using:Services -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
}

Another option would be WMI:

$fltr = ($Services | ForEach-Object { 'Name="{0}"' -f $_ }) -join ' or '
Get-WmiObject Win32_Service -Computer $Machines -Filter $fltr | ForEach-Object {
    $_.StopService()
    $_.StartService()
}

Answer 2

I am with Ansgar, this should work

$Services = Get-Content -Path "C:\Powershell\Services.txt"
$Machines = Get-Content -Path "C:\Powershell\Machines.txt"
foreach ($service in $services){
    foreach ($computer in $Machines){
    Invoke-Command -ComputerName $computer -ScriptBlock{
    Restart-Service -DisplayName $service}
    }
}

it is a little messy but should give you a starting point

Sorry I forgot to take time to explain what is going on, so you import each of your txt docs and then it will process for each service and each computer and restart the services.