PowerShell slow Invoke-Command

Question

I'm writing a PowerShell-Script that reads all shares from all AD-Servers and outputs them into a csv-file. At the same time the script is saving all occuring errors and outputs them into an error-log. Can you guys see any possibility that could fasten up the whole process, because right now it takes quite a long time.

My code:

    function output1 {

        Get-Content C:\PowerShell\Shares\serverlist.txt | Where-Object { $_.name -like "*" } | ForEach-Object {

            $ErrorActionPreference = 'silentlycontinue'
            $name = $_ + ".domain.com"
            $pathnotnull = $_.Path -ne ""

            invoke-command -ComputerName $name -ArgumentList $name, $pathnotnull -ScriptBlock { 

                param($name, $pathnotnull)
                Get-SmbShare | where-object { $_.Path -ne '' } | Select-Object -Property "Name", "Path" | get-acl | Select-Object -Property "PSChildName", "Path", "Group", "AccessToString" 
                
            }

            if (!$?) {
                if ($error[0].exception.message) { Write-Host "Access to $_ failed!" -ForegroundColor Red }
                $error | Set-Content $error_logfile -Encoding Unicode
            }
            else {
                Write-Host "Access to $_ successful!" -ForegroundColor Green
                return $i
            }
        }

    
    }
    
    $i = output1
    $i | Out-Null
    $ErrorActionPreference = 'silentlycontinue'

    if ($i -ne $null) {
        $i | export-csv -path C:\PowerShell\Shares\shares.csv -NoTypeInformation -delimiter ";"
    }
    else {
        ""
        write-host "No server could be contacted!" -ForegroundColor Red
        ""
        openerrorlog1
    }

Could you explain why are you passing `param($name, $pathnotnull)` to your remote session? Both variables don't seem to be used there. — Santiago Squarzon, Feb 10 '22 at 15:15
You're targeting the remote computers _sequentially_. You can greatly speed up the operation by targeting them in _parallel_, by passing the whole _array_ of computer names to `Invoke-Command -ComputerName`. — mklement0, Feb 10 '22 at 15:18
You are using `Get-Content` which results in a string array an then use a `Where-Object` clause to filter `$_.name -like "*"`... `$_` is just a string and there is no property `.name`.... equally, there is no `$_.Path` when `$_` is just a string — Theo, Feb 10 '22 at 15:27
@Santiago Squarzon You're right, I removed them. It didn't affect the speed though. — zynory, Feb 10 '22 at 15:27

Santiago Squarzon · Accepted Answer · 2022-02-10T15:31:35.713

Your code could be reduced to this I believe, as mklement0 suggests, Invoke-Command can take an array of computers and invoke the same script block in parallel which will make your script run exponentially faster. I also don't see a need for a function, in this case. As for, capturing the errors from Invoke-Command you could redirect them (2>&1) to the success stream and then you can filter by -is [ErrorRecord]:

$ErrorActionPreference = 'Continue'

$computers = (Get-Content C:\PowerShell\Shares\serverlist.txt).ForEach({
    if(-not [string]::IsNullOrWhiteSpace($_))
    {
        "$_.domain.com"
    }
})

$remoteCode = {
    Get-SmbShare | Where-Object Path | Get-Acl |
    Select-Object -Property "PSChildName", "Path", "Group", "AccessToString"
}

$results = Invoke-Command -ComputerName $computers -ScriptBlock $remoteCode 2>&1
$errors, $good = $results.Where({$_ -is [System.Management.Automation.ErrorRecord]}, 'Split')

$good | Export-Csv .....

# Here are the Errros
$errors.Exception.Message

PowerShell slow Invoke-Command

1 Answers1