Not able to CHEF bootstrap a windows EC2 instance, Winrm error

Question

I am using CHEF 12 and trying to bootstrap an EC2 instance (Win server 2012 R2) from my workstation. However, I am getting the below error.

> Waiting for remote response before
> bootstrap.....................ERROR: No response received from remote
> node after 2.08 minutes, giving up. ERROR: Network Error: No
> connection could be made because the target machine actively refused
> it. - connect(2) (http://52.76.1.57:5985) Check your knife
> configuration and network settings

I have two CHEF servers (Hosted as well as on-premises); I have tried bootstraping the EC2 instance using each of these, but get the same result.

Chef bootstrap command issued via power-shell:

PS ~\chef-repo> knife bootstrap windows winrm 52.76.1.57 --winrm-user Administrator --winrm-password '******' --node-name node_145 --run-list 'recipe[ie::esc],recipe[install_iis]'

As far as I researched, it is because I am not able to establish a WINRM connection from my workstation to the Ec2 instance. I am however able to connect to another Win 2012 server within my office network and bootstrap successfully.

have already logged in remotely to the EC2 instance and run winrm quickconfig from powershell.
have set the Administrator password to a desired one.
Have opened inbound firewall rule for WIndows remote management on ports 5985 and 5986
Set up setcurity group and allowed inbound Custom TCP rule for ports 5985 and 5986 on AWS

Tom Tom · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-04T09:58:08

you took all the necessary steps for this, would it be possible that you are getting filtered by a firewall (e.g company firewall)?

fyi, I managed to bootstrap a machine with the following steps:

# configure winrm for using knife winrm
winrm set winrm/config/service/auth '@{Basic="true"}'
winrm set winrm/config/service '@{AllowUnencrypted="true"}'
set-item WSMan:\localhost\Client\allowunencrypted $true
#turn off firewall
Set-NetFirewallProfile -Profile Domain,Public,Private -Enabled False

EDIT: to sum up below comments, the problem was the company firewall that was blocking the traffic

Not able to CHEF bootstrap a windows EC2 instance, Winrm error

2 Answers