How PowerShell Direct works with VMs on host

Q. How does PowerShell Direct communicate to a VM running on the host?

A. PowerShell Direct enables communication to a VM from its host via PowerShell even when networking or firewall configurations would typically block communication. This communication via PowerShell Direct is enabled through the secure VMBus channel that exists between the host and each VM. A new VSP/VSC pair is part of Windows Server 2016 and the client side can be seen as a new user-mode service, vmicvmsession (Hyper-V VM Session Service) which by default is set to start when triggered, i.e. PowerShell Direct is utilized. This is separate from vmicrdv that is used to enable the rich VMConnect experience which emulates RDP experience to VMs.

Each week, John Savill answers all of your toughest tech questions about the worlds of Windows Server, Azure, and beyond. Read his past IT advice here, and email your questions to [email protected].