How do I install Windows Service on remote server

Question

How do I install Windows Service (msi package) on a remote windows server and configure its Logon options.

Answer 1

To install an MSI, or anything else of that nature remotely, something needs to run on the remote box. If you're talking a service hosted in IIS, MsDeploy (now Web Publish) might work. If its something outisde of that scope, using psexec from sysinternals might work. If its part of a build process, Team Deploy layers on top of psexec. If you have System Center or similar system management infrastructure, you can push it out via that channel.

Bottom line is you havent given enough details as to how many things you want to install, on how many boxes and how often, for people to be able to give you a more precise answer than this.

EDIT: Running msiexec on the target box, probably via PowerShell Remoting would do the trick

Answer 2

The installation of a service is absolutely possible with the on-board instruments. PSEXEC from Sysinternals is proof of the concept.

What you do is basically to copy the (service) file over to the remote machine via the ADMIN$ share of the remote machine (and of course you have to be able to authenticate to the remote machine in order to access that in the first place). Then you use the OpenSCManager and CreateService functions as usual to install that file as a service. NB: this is a brief description of the steps that PSEXEC itself takes.

In Active Directory environments and given you are talking about an MSI, it may be easiest to use the existing facilities in the Active Directory to deploy the MSI to clients.