Feature Request - Credential Profile [1]

Feature Request - Credential Profile

Friday, October 20, 2017 3:20 PM - Tanner Richey

I am a network engineer. For me, and anything I an trying to convert from SecureCRT or Putty, we use Xshell to access the CLI of network devices all day, be it routers, firewalls, etc... So we have multiple credentials for various systems. We also have privileged AD accts plus our normal AD acct and also ACS or TACACS accts and possibly accts for other AD domains our company may have merged with. Point is I have 4 accts with passwords that change and about 4-5 to track. I also am using Xshell to manage thousands of devices. So do to the size of my inventory, I prefer not to store my device list in one big flat file, but nice and organized sub-folders upon sub-folders.

The issue comes when I need to change my AD login every 6 months so now I have to go to all 40 sub folders, select only those devices in that folder with my AD username, and update those properties of the device. then do it again 39 more times. Every time 1 of my 4 passwords change.. It is really unmanageable so I have to keep a HUGE flat file of devices that takes forever to populate, heaven forbid I typo my device name, the auto suggest takes 30 seconds to load so I can delete the character, but it allows me to update in bulk.

My proposal is you create a credential profile. Get me the ability to create a dozen profiles that only assign username, password, and login script, so I can enter enable mode and enter that password via script.
Then I simply select the PROFILE to use in the device properties and then when ever a pwd changes, its requires 1 singles change and then every time I open a device, it polls the current profile value and done.
Additional benefit is this allows you do export databases with 0 concern for sharing creds because they are not on the device properties.

Also if you could have a parent DB with all the devices, so they can be centrally managed and organized, new ones added as other teams do work, everything collaborated and shared.. Then each user opens their local thin client, and when you select to view the directory, it opens the DB and you select what you want. You can keep a list of favorites or recent accessed like a local caching gateway, or alternatively DL the DB when you open xshell and if the there is a conflict in credentials or other attributes, the local changes overwrite. This way the database is up to date when other teams deploy new, rename, decom, or otherwise restructure and speeds on sharing and on-boarding. No one else is doing this and I these kind of needs are what big enterprise companies have so if you can be the only one that meets them, I bet you could win them over and get those big contracts and get them away from the old securecrt that every company licenses by default. I really love xshell for network management and would love you get get a little more visibility.

Program Ver. : Xshell 5


Re: Feature Request - Credential Profile

Tuesday, October 24, 2017 1:45 AM - Support

Thank you for the detailed suggestion. Your ideas are great suggestions for improving and implementing a more robust session management system. These ideas have been shared with our dev team.

For the time being, you outlined how you are manually changing username and passwords. If you go to your session dialog box and change the view to "Tree View," you can select multiple sessions across multiple sub-folders at once. Is this what you are currently doing?

Technical Support

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