SAPIEN Solutions

Hal Rottenberg has put together a very nice set of functions for exporting and importing PSCredential to a file. The export function takes a PSCredential and serializes it to an XML file. The corresponding import function reconstitutes the PSCredential to an object that you can use. Now before you start freaking out about security, the xml file can only be used by the same user account that created it.

What I like about this is that I can now have multiple credentials easily stored for different computers.  I’m no longer tied to using one credential. First I’ll export my credentials:

PS C:\> export-pscredential -path godot.cred.xml

PS C:\> export-pscredential -path jdhit.cred.xml

Now I’ll build an associative array of computernames and their corresponding PSCredential:

PS C:\> $sys=@{”godot”=(import-pscredential .\godot.cred.xml);”jdhit-dc01″=(import-pscredential .\jdhit.cred.xml);”dogtoy”=(import-pscredential .\jdhit.cred.xml)}
PS C:\scripts\PoSH> $sys

Name                           Value
—-                           —–
jdhit-dc01                     System.Management.Automation.PSCredential
godot                          System.Management.Automation.PSCredential
dogtoy                         System.Management.Automation.PSCredential

Here’s an example of how I might use this array:

PS C:\> $sys.keys | ForEach {gwmi win32_computersystem -computer “$_” -cred $sys.item($_)} | Select Name,Manufacturer,Model

Name                                    Manufacturer                            Model
—-                                    ————                            —–
JDHIT-DC01                              MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD       KM400-8235
GODOT                                   Dell Computer Corporation               Latitude D800
DOGTOY                                  Dell Computer Corporation               Dimension 8300

This is a wicked set of functions that are great for unattended automation.

Technorati Tags: Export-cliXML, Get-Credential, Import-cliXML, powershell, PSCredential, scripting, XML

Tags: Export-cliXML, Get-Credential, Import-cliXML, powershell, PSCredential, scripting, XML

This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 9:22 am and is filed under Windows PowerShell. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.