PowerShell : A deep dive into remoting - Part 6

Implicit remoting is a powerful feature of PowerShell remoting that enables you to import remote commands into your local session, or store the imported commands on the local disk for later use and use them as if they  are available on the local computer. With implicit remoting it’s possible to use the commands available in a PowerShell module added to a remote computer to execute on the local machine. Even though the commands are invoked from the local machine and looks like they are executed locally, in reality they are shortcuts/ proxies to the actual commands and will execute on the remote machines. After execution the results are transferred to the local computer via remoting.
To understand the details of implicit remoting and how it works, let’s look into the sample scenario given below.

What I’ve done here is imported a module (PSSQL) using a session that was created before and then imported that session to the local computer with the module PSSQL so that I can use the commands that are available as part of that module on my computer. To easily identify the commands that are imported as part of the Import-PSSession I’ve prefixed the commands REMSQL.

Now I can execute the cmdlets that are listed by the Get-Command –Noun REMSQL* command in the screenshot as if I execute any local commands. Please note that the behavior of the execution is the same as for other commands that are executed remotely. The objects that are returned as part of the execution will not have any methods attached to them as they are actually serialized objects from the remote machine. If you have imported a module from a computer, you need to remember that the commands run on the remote computer. If you run Get commands, they will get data from the remote computer. If you run Set commands, they change data on the remote computer. The commands look and feel local, but they're remote commands.

Persisting the imported commands

The commands that you have imported using Import-PSSession option will only stay in the local computer till the session is active. That means as soon as the remote session is closed or exited, you'll lose the commands. If you still want to keep the imported commands for later use even after the session is closed, then you need to persist the commands on the local machine.

The Export-PSSession cmdlet will help you persist the imported commands from another session and saves them in a Windows PowerShell module.

Unlike Import-PSSession, which imports commands from another PSSession into the current session, Export-PSSession saves the commands in a module. The commands are not imported into the current session. By default, Export-PSSession exports all commands, except for commands that exist in the current session, but you can use the CommandName parameters to specify the commands to export.

The Export-PSSession cmdlet uses the implicit remoting feature of Windows PowerShell. When you import commands into the current session, they run implicitly in the original session or in a similar session on the originating computer.

For e.g the above command will export the commands available in the module SQLPS to a module REMSQLPS on the local machine and can be used later for execution. Export-PSSession command support multiple arguments that can be used to customize the export, like –CommandName, -CommandType etc. Once you have exported the commands and persisted on the local computer, you can later use the Import-Command to load these modules whenever needed and work on the commands like any other powershell commands. While executing these commands, PowerShell will take care of creating a new remote session and managing it.