SSH via Powershell

In hosting environments, you rarely see only one flavor of operating system, so to be able to manage linux systems with Powershell via SSH is a big help. With Windows Server 2016, SSH connectivity will be built in, but until that time you can quite easily get it right now.

Step 1:
Go to https://sshnet.codeplex.com and download the .Net 4.0 binary from the downloads section and place the "Renci.SshNet.dll" file somewhere where you can access it. In my example I put it in C:\Scripts

Most likely Chrome will ask you whether it is safe to download, obviously say "Keep":







Step 2:
Go to the file, rightclick and select Properties, then unblock the file.



Step 3:
Here comes the example code. Quick explanation: First you load the DLL, then you create an object with the DLL file (I'm sure there's a technical programmy way of saying this, but I have no clue), then you suddenly have all these cool features like "Connect" and "RunCommand". It is not an interactive thing (as far as I know), and you only have a single command you can run, so you can't create a scriptblock and run it all at once.

#Load the SSHNet Library

[void][reflection.assembly]::LoadFrom( (Resolve-Path "C:\Scripts\Renci.SshNet.dll") )

#The variables you need to log on

$server = "Server01"

$login = "someuser"

$password = "somepassword"

#Call the SSHNet Library as an object

$SshClient = New-Object Renci.SshNet.SshClient($server, 22, $login, $password)

#Connect to client using SSH

  $SshClient.Connect()

    

   if ($SshClient.IsConnected) {

    Write-Host "Connected to " $server

    #Run the command on the linux host

    $cmd = $SshClient.RunCommand('ls -l')

    

    if($cmd.Result -ne '')

    {

        Write-Host Output from $server

        Write-Host $cmd.Result

    }

    

  }

$SshClient.Disconnect()

$SshClient.Dispose()

Which gives the following output:

Connected to  Server01
Output from Server01
total 12
-rw-r--r-- 1 Akos users 136 Feb 21  2008 local.cshrc
-rw-r--r-- 1 Akos users 157 Feb 21  2008 local.login
-rw-r--r-- 1 Akos users 174 Feb 21  2008 local.profile

Of course this is a simple example, but you can load in a CSV file with server, login and password info, and then have a command run on however many servers as you want. It's always fun being able to tell your boss that you're doing that thing on 50 servers, and then getting a cup of tea while your script is doing your work for you. This SSHNet client can also upload files using sftp but I haven't tried that yet.