The use of WinRM means a wide array of support for Windows versions new and old—under the hood, just about any Windows version that supports the following will work:
- PowerShell 3.0
- .NET 4.0
In practice, this means that the following Windows versions can be supported, provided the preceding requirements are met:
- Desktop: Windows 7 SP1, 8.1, and 10
- Server: Windows Server 2008 SP2, 2008 R2 SP1, 2012, 2012 R2, 2016, and 2019
Note that the older OSes listed previously (such as Windows 7 or Server 2008) did not ship with .NET 4.0 or PowerShell 3.0, and these will need to be installed before they can be used with Ansible. Note that newer versions of PowerShell are supported, and, equally, there may be security patches for .NET 4.0. Given that, in a business environment, there are likely to be policies and procedures already in place for this kind of thing, incorporating the older OSes listed previously is beyond the scope of this text.