Exchange Management Shell or the Exchange Management Console: Connecting to remote server failed with the following error message: The WinRM client received an HTTP status code of 403 from the remote WS-Management service

"Connecting to the remote server failed with the following error message" error when you start the Exchange Management Shell or the Exchange Management Console

Symptoms

When you try to start the Microsoft Exchange Management Shell (EMS) or the Microsoft Exchange Management Console (EMC) on a server that is running Microsoft Exchange Server, you receive one of the following error messages:

Connecting to remote server failed with the following error message: The WinRM client received an HTTP status code of 403 from the remote WS-Management service.

Resolution

If the available solutions that you Googled do not solve the problem, you can try the following.

1. Use Internet Explorer to access the same URL as stated which is http://yourIISserver/PowerShell.  It should give more information on why the console is having issues accessing it.

2. Once you know why IIS is rejecting the access, check IIS log in C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\ for more detail by looking for the keyword 'PowerShell'

In my case, the issue was because the server was using IPv6 address which is not in my list of allowed IP addresses.

The above error is IIS related. Basically the console has problems accessing PowerShell via IIS. While the cause may not be the same for you, the steps above may shed more light into it.