Hosting

You can host PowerShell Universal as a Windows Service, in IIS, as a Azure Web App or just as a stand alone application. If you are running on Windows, we suggest either a Windows Service or IIS.

Hosting as a Windows Service

To host as a Windows Service, you can download and install the PowerShell Universal MSI. The MSI will automatically install the PowerShell Universal service and start it. Jobs will run under the system account by default but you can configure the service to run under another account after installation.

After the MSI has finished setup, your default web browser will open to http://localhost:5000 for login. The default login credentials are set to Admin and any password.

Configuring a Windows Service Manually

You do not need to use the MSI to configure Universal as a Windows Service. You can also do it manually with the following PowerShell script.

New-Service -Name "PowerShellUniversal" -BinaryPathName "Universal.Server.exe --service" -Description "PowerShell Universal server service." -DisplayName "PowerShell Universal" -StartupType Automatic
Start-Service PowerShellUniversal

Hosting in Azure

You can host PowerShell Universal in Azure as a Linux, Windows or Docker web app. To create a persistent web app, it's easiest to deploy using a standard Azure Web App.

We have a GitHub repository that contains a GitHub action workflow for downloading the latest version of PowerShell Universal, updating appsettings.json and web.config to work with Azure and then deploying to an existing web app.

Hosting Manually

You can also host the Universal server as a stand alone application. Simply run the Universal.Server.exe from the binary directory to utilize the Kestrel web server implementation in ASP.NET Core to start the web server.

Web Server Configuration

This section applies to Universal when it is hosted outside of IIS.

Setting the Port and Listening Address

You can set the port of the Universal server by modifying the appsettings.json file. We recommend that you create an appsettings.json file in the default configuration folder.

Windows

%ProgramData%\PowerShellUniversal

Linux

%HOME%/.PowerShellUniversal

To set the port, change the Kestrel endpoints section of the appsettings.json. By default, the configuration is defined to listen on port 5000 and on any address.

    "Kestrel": {
    "Endpoints": {
      "HTTP": {
        "Url": "http://*:5000"
      }
    }
  },

Configuring HTTPS

To configure HTTPS, you can adjust the appsettings.json file to use a particular certificate and port. The below configuration uses the testCert.pfx file and testPassword and listens on port 5463.

{
  "Kestrel": {
    "Endpoints": {
       "HTTP": { "Url": "http://*:5000" },
           "HTTPS": {
              "Url": "https://*:5463",
              "Certificate": {
                  "Path": "testCert.pfx",
                  "Password": "testPassword"
              }
          }
    }
}

To configure a certificate in a particular location and store, you can use a configuration such as this.

"HTTPS": {
  "Url": "https://*:443",
  "Certificate": {
    "Subject": "windows-server.ironman.local",
    "Store": "My",
    "Location": "LocalMachine",
    "AllowInvalid": "true"
  }
}

Location can be either CurrentUser or LocalMachine.

Protocol

By default, Universal will listen on HTTP1 and HTTP2. You can adjust the protocols that the server listens to by setting the Protocols property. For example, you can specifically set HTTP1 and HTTP2 support with the following setting.

"Kestrel": {
  "Endpoints": {
    "HTTP": {
      "Url": "http://*:5000",
      "Protocols": "Http1AndHttp2"
    }
  },
  "RedirectToHttps": "false"
},

Some versions of Windows Server (like 2012R2), do not support HTTP2. To disable HTTP2 support, set the listener to only listen on HTTP1.

"Kestrel": {
  "Endpoints": {
    "HTTP": {
      "Url": "http://*:5000",
      "Protocols": "Http1"
    }
  },
  "RedirectToHttps": "false"
},

For a full set of listening options, you can refer to the ASP.NET Core Documentation.