Use ansible for manage windows servers from a windows client.

Ansible requires linux in the client machine (manager node), so you will need a virtual environment for the client:

• Virtualbox
• Vagrant

In windows servers, you must enable remote connections with PowerShell.

Follow next steps for configuration.

• Requires PowerShell 3.0 installed (from powershell terminal, run: $PSVersionTable.PSVersion). Note: requires Windows Feature "Windows PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE)".
• Launch powershell terminal (run as administrator)
• You can try to upgrade from powershell 2.0 with the script 'powershell/upgrade_to_ps3.ps1'.
• Allow powershell execution

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

• Execute script 'powershell/ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1' (SkipNetworkProfileCheck param needed for private/domain network and public network are defined on the server).

./ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1 -SkipNetworkProfileCheck

• Revert allow powershell execution

Set-ExecutionPolicy Restricted

Now server is ready to be managed by ansible (with win remote connection).

• Install VirtualBox + Vagrant
• Edit 'Vagrantfile', to point to the local path of this project on your disk. Then, inside vagrant environment, you can acces to this project resources in /src.

...
config.vm.synced_folder "c:/src/ansible-windows", "/src"
...

• Edit <this_project>/hosts, at the end of the file, add your remote host to manage in a list (in this example 'windows'):

[windows]
server-name1
server-name2
server-name3

• Edit group_vars/windows.yml, replacing {domain_name}, {domain_user} and {password} with valid credentials to connect windows servers.

# it is suggested that these be encrypted with ansible-vault:
# ansible-vault edit group_vars/windows.yml

ansible_user: {domain_name}\{domain_user}
ansible_password: {user_password}
ansible_port: 5986
ansible_connection: winrm
# The following is necessary for Python 2.7.9+ when using default WinRM self-signed certificates:
ansible_winrm_server_cert_validation: ignore
# Define transport, like here: https://github.com/diyan/pywinrm#run-process-with-low-level-api-with-domain-user-disabling-https-cert-validation
ansible_winrm_transport: ntlm

• Run virtual environment:

vagrant up

• Connect via console:

vagrant ssh

• Go to project base directory:

cd /src

• Test it! Get facts from server, it must return a json with server info.

ansible {server-name} -m setup