What is "Powerful Computer Manager"?

Powerful Computer Manager is the super-simple-but-powerful program to automatizate tasks in groups of computers (In a Active Directory site, or not) in a unattended way. It inteed to be a simple SSMS alternative, that inventarizes computers and install/remove software in it, tweak system of run arbitrary commands.

You only have to write simple cooks that are small yaml text files, create groups of computers and assign cooks to this computers, and will be run in the destination computers

Disclaimer

I'm using this program in the company I work with 10 computers with Windows 8.1/10 with various software (MSI,EXE,...) and tweaking services, and it works right

It's not super-stable and error proof, then, I don't have any responsability if something crashes, but you can open a Issue and will see it

Roadmap

GUI administration in Python to superseed Powershell CLI control program and be cross-platform

Requirements

Server

For server you can use Linux or Windows, and in theory any environment that can run Python 3 can work as server

• Python3 with: - Falcon - Waitress-serve - Json (Python3 have it preinstalled) - Yaml Python3 deps can be installed it using pip install command (pip install waitress falcon pyyaml)
• For controlling the program, you have to use "control.ps1" using Powershell. Powershell comes with Windows, and can be installed (PWCore) in Linux and macOS (I didn't tested it).

Clients

• Windows:

  • Windows 7 SP1 absolute minimal, but its only officially tested in 8.1 and 10, Windows 7 is being old now.
  • It needs Powershell 5.0+, lower versions doesn't have some commands, not tested. In Windows 7 and 8.1, you have to update Powershell. (With Powershell 3.0/4.0, some commands like Get-Package doesn't work) You can update from here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/setup/installing-windows-powershell?view=powershell-6#upgrading-existing-windows-powershell

• Linux:

  • Not supported yet, but when Windows be stable, I will try to do it in some way

Instalation. Example installing Server and using a GPO of Active Directory/Task Schedule to make it work in clients

• Copy this folder to a folder in your server
• Install dependencies
• Open sysopt.py file and change values if needed
• Use bat file if you are in Windows to run the python server, or sh file if you are in Linux environment
• Go to Client folder and copy "configexample.ps1" to "config.ps1" and change their values to yours.
• For clients to work, they have to run "client\client.ps1" every 30 mins/1 hour or so, I did using Active Directory and a Task Scheduled GPO (Copying client.ps1 and config.ps1 files from Client to SysVol\DomainName\Scripts)
  • User: SYSTEM (Or NT\SYSTEM)
  • Command: powershell.exe
  • Args: -executionpolicy bypass -windowstyle hidden -noninteractive -nologo -file "\SERVER\SysVol\DOMAINNAME\scripts\client.ps1" Note: client.ps1 has to have control.ps1 file with it
• If you don't have Active Directory, you can do the Task Scheduled task in every computer without problems, and using another Shared folder, it will work