Unlike vSphere PowerCLI, VMware Horizon does not include a standalone installer that is used to remotely manage Horizon using PowerCLI. The Horizon PowerCLI commands will only work when executed from a Horizon connection server. To enable remote management, we must enable Windows Remote Management (WinRM) on at least one Horizon connection server in each Horizon pod that we want to manage.

WinRM is based on the WS-Management protocol, which is a SOAP-based protocol that is used to enable interoperability between hardware and OSes from different vendors. We will use WinRM to establish remote PowerShell connections to a Horizon connection server; this will enable us to run commands from that server without actually having to log in to the server console.