I recently had some major issues remoting using PowerCLI. I did find a workaround, but wanted to bounce this off everyone because I don't know why the workaround works.
When I remote into a machine, add the VMWAre.vimautomation.core snapin and run certain commands, the remote session dies suddenly on me.
Here is how I get the error to occur:
1) Make sure the memory celiing on remote sessions is lifted on the remote server (server1): Set-Item WSMAN:\localhost\Shell\MaxMemoryPerShellMB -Value 0
2) Enter-pssession server1
3) (in the remote session) Add-PSSnapin vmware.vimautomation.core
4) Connect-Viserver myvcserver (I get prompted for credentials here, which I enter)
5) Get-VMHost myhostname | FL *
Step 5 never returns results, my remote session closes and I get this error:
Processing data from remote server server1 failed with the following error message: The WSMan provider host process did not return a proper response. A provider in the host process may have behaved improperly. For more information, see the about_Remote_Troubleshooting Help topic.
My Workaround is to install powershell 3.0 on server1. If I install WM3.0 and run the same exact commands, it works like a charm.
My PowerCli version is:
VMware vSphere PowerCLI 5.1 Release 1 build 793510
I don't see any mention of Powershell 3.0 being *required* to remote with PowerCLI. Does anybody else see this behavior and does anybody know why this happens?
Thanks!