Get-WmiObject : The RPC server is unavailable. (Ex

Question

When I run

Get-WmiObject win32_SystemEnclosure -Computer hostname | select serialnumber

it works for both local and remote hosts.

When I do this for a list of hosts using

ForEach ($_ in gc u:\pub\list.txt) {
    Get-WmiObject win32_SystemEnclosure -Computer $_ | select serialnumber | format-table -auto @{Label="Hostname"; Expression={$_}}, @{Label="Service Tag"; Expression={$_.serialnumber}}
}

it returns

Get-WmiObject : The RPC server is unavailable. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800706BA)

Answer 1

Check that the "Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI-In)" rule is enabled in the firewall for each remote machine.

Or in an Administrative Command/Powershell prompt run:

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group="Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)" new enable=yes

Answer 2

I faced the similar issue on new server that I built through automated scripts via vcenter api. Looks like the "Remote Procedure Call (RPC)" service may not be running on the remote machine. you need to wait for the service to come up to use the Get-WmiObject command. Hence I simply put the script into sleep for sometime and it worked.

Answer 3

I was doing this mistake

ForEach ($server in $servers) {
$OS = Get-WmiObject win32_operatingsystem -ComputerName $server
}

Which, of course, couldn't be passed, because output of the server in a csv file was @{Name=hv1g.contoso.com}

I had to call the property from csv file like this $server.Name

ForEach ($server in $servers) {
$OS = Get-WmiObject win32_operatingsystem -ComputerName $server.Name
}

It fixed my issue.