Are you tired of having to bring up a Remote Desktop to your SharePoint server just to run an stsadm command? I sure was. Here’s a very simple way to remotely execute stsadm commands against any SharePoint server to which you have a LAN connection. Best of all, unlike some other methods out there, this method does not require deploying anything to the SharePoint server. However, this method is primarily for LAN scenarios, and it is very unlikely to work over the Internet.

What you’ll need

PsExec.exe by Sysinternals (now part of Microsoft) is a great utility that allows you to execute any command line against any Windows computer to which you have a LAN connection and proper credentials without installing any software on the remote server. PsExec sits on the workstation computer that you are using. Since stsadm is a command line tool and PsExec is designed to execute command lines, we can combine stsadm with PsExec to create a very nifty way to work on SharePoint servers remotely using only a command prompt.

PsExec uses Windows RPC ports to execute the commands, so if you will need to have the RPC ports open between your workstation and the SharePoint server that you want to manage. This is why it is unlikely to work over the Internet. This article has a nice primer on Windows TCP ports and references to other resources.

How to use PsExec with Stsadm

Here’s what you do. Remember that you will do all of these steps from your desktop computer, not the SharePoint server.

1. Download PsExec from Microsoft’s web site to your computer, not to the SharePoint server.
2. Open a command prompt (in administrative mode if you are using Vista with UAC enabled), and change to the directory where you have downloaded and extracted the PsExec tool.
3. Execute stsadm.exe through the PsExec command. Use the following format:
   psexec \[SharePoint_Server_NetBIOS_Name] –u [username] –p [password] “C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft SharedWeb Server Extensions12BINstsadm.exe” –o [stsadm_parameters]

   Note: You need “\” in front of the remote SharePoint computer’s name.

Notice that all files names and paths should be absolute paths and in the context of the remote SharePoint on which you are executing the stsadm command.

A few sample commands

Here’s a sample that will enumerate all solutions:

psexec \wss01 –u mydomainadministrator –p password “C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft SharedWeb Server Extensions12BINstsadm.exe” –o enumsolutions

Here’s a sample that will do a SharePoint backup to the “c:backup folder” directory on the SharePoint server. Notice that parameters that contain spaces need to be enclosed in quotes:

psexec \wss01 –u mydomainadministrator –p password “C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft SharedWeb Server Extensions12BINstsadm.exe -o backup –directory “c:backup folder” -backupmethod full

Here’s a sample that will copy a WSP solution to a remote SharePoint server, add the solution to the solution store, and deploy the solution to the farm

REM Set an environment variable to point to stsadm. This is just for convenience

set s=“C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft SharedWeb Server Extensions12BINstsadm.exe”

REM Copy the WSP solution file to the remote SharePoint server through the admin$ administrative share. This share points to the Windows directory. You must have administrative rights on the server to access this share. The “net use” command will establish credentials on the remote server share.

net use \wss01admin$ /USER:mydomainadministrator password

copy C:DeployMySolution.WSP \wss01admin$tempMySolution.WSP

REM Add the WSP solution to the solution store

psexec \wss01 –u mydomainadministrator –p password “%s%” –o addsolution –filename c:windowstempMySolution.WSP

REM Create a timer job to deploy the solution to all content web applications in the SharePoint farm

psexec \wss01 –u mydomainadministrator –p password “%s%” –o deploysolution -name MySolution.WSP –allcontenturls –allowgacdeployment –immediate

REM Start the deployment timer job

psexec \wss01 –u mydomainadministrator –p password “%s%” –o execadmsvcjobs

Why not PowerShell

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve been using all batch command statements in this article. The natural question to ask is: “Why not use PowerShell" instead?” After all, PowerShell is certainly far more powerful than the dated DOS commands that are available through batch files. While this is true, the fact is that PowerShell is not installed on a fairly large portion of SharePoint servers because PowerShell was not released when Windows Server 2003 came out, which still forms a very large percentage of the base operating system used for SharePoint deployments. Because one of the goals of this article was to come up with a remote SharePoint management method that could be used with all LAN SharePoint servers with no additional server software install, PowerShell was out.