Understanding Export-PSSession in PowerShell

Welcome back to Wahmans PowerShell Blog! Today, we’re diving into a very handy cmdlet that often comes in useful when you’re working across remote PowerShell sessions: Export-PSSession.

Export-PSSession exports commands from another session and saves them in a PowerShell module. This lets you access remote commands locally without needing to stay connected to the remote session. It’s especially powerful in enterprise environments with many systems and modules distributed remotely.

Why Use Export-PSSession?

• To reuse remote commands locally without keeping a session open.
• To persist a subset of commands for disconnected or offline use.
• To reduce noise by importing only specific commands.

Example 1: Basic Export from Remote Session (Beginner)

This example shows how to export all available commands from a remote session on another computer:

Enter-PSSession -ComputerName Server01
$session = New-PSSession -ComputerName Server01
Export-PSSession -Session $session -OutputModule RemoteModule

This creates a new module named RemoteModule that can be imported with Import-Module for reuse.

Example 2: Export Specific Commands

Let’s say you only want to export a few specific commands from the remote session to avoid unnecessary clutter:

$session = New-PSSession -ComputerName Server01
Export-PSSession -Session $session -OutputModule ADCommands `
  -CommandName Get-ADUser, Get-ADGroup

This saves only Get-ADUser and Get-ADGroup into a module called ADCommands.

Example 3: Saving to a Custom Path

Want to export the module somewhere other than the default module path?

$session = New-PSSession -ComputerName Server01
Export-PSSession -Session $session -OutputModule CustomModule `
  -OutputDirectory "C:\CustomModules"

This saves the generated module in C:\CustomModules, which you can later import directly with:

Import-Module "C:\CustomModules\CustomModule"

Example 4: Advanced Filtering with Prefix and Format Handling

To avoid naming conflicts and format issues, you can add a prefix and skip formats:

$session = New-PSSession -ComputerName Server01
Export-PSSession -Session $session -OutputModule PrefixedModule `
  -CommandName Get-Process, Get-Service `
  -CommandPrefix Remote `
  -NoClobber -AllowClobber

This will prefix every command (e.g., Remote-Get-Process) to avoid naming collisions with local commands.

Final Thoughts

Using Export-PSSession effectively allows you to streamline remote management and reuse only what you need. It’s especially useful for system administrators who frequently manage disparate machines with varying configurations.

Happy scripting, and I will see you in the next post!