So, you’re doing stuff with these new “virtual” machines eh? Well if you’re using windows, there’s a damn good chance you’ll need to enable and configure winrm, otherwise you won’t be able to log in to your swanky new “virtual machine”! Even Chef needs this service running on the target in order to work with windows. Anyway, here’s what to do: open a powershell prompt and type the following:

winrm quickconfig -q

winrm set winrm/config/winrs ‘@{MaxMemoryPerShellMB=”512″}’

winrm set winrm/config ‘@{MaxTimeoutms=”1800000″}’

winrm set winrm/config/service ‘@{AllowUnencrypted=”true”}’

winrm set winrm/config/service/auth ‘@{Basic=”true”}’

Start-Service WinRM

set-service WinRM -StartupType Automatic

Alternatively you could create a ps1 script containing the stuff above, open powershell, do the thingy that allows you to run unsigned scripts, namely:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

Then run the ps1 script.

There, I’ve blogged it, now I’ll never have to google this again!