Solarwinds – “The WinRM client cannot process the request”

Added the Exchange 2010 Database Availability Group application monitor to couple of our Exchange 2010 servers and got the following error –

error1

Clicking “More” gives the following –

error2

This is because Solarwinds is trying to run a PowerShell script on the remote server and the script is unable to run due to authentication errors. That’s because Solarwinds is trying to connect to the server using its IP address, and so instead of using Kerberos authentication it resorts to Negotiate authentication (which is disabled). The error message too says the same but you can verify it for yourself from the Solarwinds server too. Try the following command

This is what’s happening behind the scenes and as you will see it fails. Now replace “Negotiate” with “Kerberos” and it succeeds –

So, how to fix this? Logon to the remote server and launch IIS Manager. It’s under “Administrative Tools” and may not be there by default (my server only had “Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Manager”), in which case add it via Server Manager/ PowerShell –

Then open IIS Manager, go to Sites > PowerShell and double click “Authentication”.

iis-1

Select “Windows Authentication” and click “Enable”.

iis-2

Now Solarwinds will work.