Remote installation MSU file with Powershell

I'm back, yesterday was a bad day, I lost a build machine on vCenter and the guy who built it was left, he even didn't remember how to build it so a big fight happened to build up this build machine.

Everything is on track now so I'm back with the little problem of installation msu file on remote machine. 

Use Case:

I need to run window upgrade (install Windows KB msu files) for some of my template machines. If we have SystemCenter or other infrastructure management tool should be a flash to do that. I'm working on Jenkins to run this automation so I decide to use Powershell.

Solution:

As I can use Powershell for remote call so I will use Invoke-Command for msiexec (for msi) or wusa (for msu). However, life is not so simple as wusa can't be triggered by Invoke-Command so we have to use WinRS (Windows Remote Shell).

First, we have to extract the cab file from msu file

winrs.exe -r:$vmIP -u:$VmUser -p:$VmPwd wusa.exe $kbFile /extract:$kbFolder

Then we will install the cab file with dism tool

winrs.exe -r:$vmIP -u:$VmUser -p:$VmPwd dism.exe /Online /Add-Package /NoRestart /PackagePath:$kbcabFile


There is a note here if you go through a list of KBs then you will use a loop, running winrs in a loop might cause an execution hang because of the stdin. Provide the $null output to this command

$null | winrs.exe -r:$vmIP -u:$VmUser -p:$VmPwd dism.exe /Online /Add-Package /NoRestart /PackagePath:$kbcabFile


It's Friday, a light topic for the weekend! Have fun all!