Setting up Windows for Ansible

Ansible Official Documentation has a nice section about how to prepare windows machines. If you are not an winrm expert, you may encounter some issues that are hand-waivy in the documentation. It took me quite a lot of trial and error to figure out.

Here are couple of steps to check:

1. Make sure the windows account (Admin account) you are connecting to has a password.

   Duh! but sometimes its not obvious, when you start with a passwordless test machine. Winrm will report error during configuration which took you a long time to figure out.

2. Make sure all network connections are set to Home/Office Network. (namely, non-Public Network)

   Sometimes its trickly to set unidentified networks, here are the steps. 1. Run gpedit.msc, Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Network List Manager Policies 2. Set unindentified and public networks to private. See official docs

3. Sometimes you will get permission denied when running powershell script. Open powershell as admin and run the following to enable running scripts.

    set-executionpolicy remotesigned 
   

4. Now you can follow the official guide to upgrade powershell and configure winrm.

   There are 2 scripts: upgrade_ps2_to_ps3 and configureAnsibleforRemoting to execute, plus a hot patch that must be applied.