[Question] Do you have an example for Powershell remoting through lambda function?

[liacha1986]

I have followed all the MS guides on setting up Powershell remoting on the server and can confirm from my test environment that I am able to SSH into my test box. I added the public key to my lambda function and referenced it with the command below:

$session = New-PSSession -HostName "mydc01.xyz.com" -UserName "Administrator" -KeyFilePath "$env:LAMBDA_TASK_ROOT/examplemodule/id_ed25519.pub"

I just get a generic message saying that "An error has occurred which Powershell cannot handle. A remote session might have ended".

The use case here is, I am trying to run some Get/Set-ADUser commands on my test domain users from the lambda function (tor reset AD passwords). Did a bunch of research and it seems powershell core doesn't have native support for the ActiveDirectory modules so I was trying to start a session and use the Invoke-Command cmdlet to run the command(s) I wanted.

[avanvucht]

Hey, you will have to make sure that your Lambda function has permission to access this. If you're using AWS SAM, your Parameters block would have something like:

  DCSecurityGroupIds:
    Type: CommaDelimitedList
    Description: Comma-delimited security group IDs to allow LDAP communication with domain controller and HTTP/HTTPS communication with the Exchange Server
    Default: sg-6db2****
      
  DCSubnetIds:
    Type: CommaDelimitedList
    Description: Comma-delimited subnet IDs of the domain controller
    Default: subnet-0ab83************,subnet-0931************

And you'd refer to these parameters in your AWS::Serverless::Function block, in a VpcConfig:

      VpcConfig:
        SecurityGroupIds: !Ref DCSecurityGroupIds
        SubnetIds: !Ref DCSubnetIds

I suggest getting this working first from Powershell on a machine on the same network as the Domain Controllers. The Cloud9 IDE, for instance, is a simple way to test Powershell lambda functions:

sam build --parallel && sam local invoke "AccessProvisionerFunction" --event samples/dev/event-provision-access.json

Just make sure your Cloud9 IDE can talk with your Domain Controller by being on the same VPC subnets and security groups.

[austoonz]

Given this runtime runs in Linux (custom runtime running on Amazon Linux 2), the New-PSSession cmdlet would use ssh under the covers, and ssh does not exist in the custom runtime environment.

So I agree with @avanvucht that you'd likely need to execute the Lambda Function from within the same VPC as your target system, you'd also need to include a Lambda layer or similar that includes the ssh binary (and anything else to required to make ssh work).

[liacha1986]

Thanks guys. I'm pretty new to this so any specific resources you can share will be appreciated. I'll try to google my way through and report back with any problems.

[julianwood]

If you're asking about the ssh component. Try packaging the ssh binary with your function code, ensure its executable and reference it in /var/task, that may be the simplest way to get started.

[briantist]

#22 (comment)

[briantist]

• Add PSWSMan and document PowerShell remoting to Windows hosts #32