how to use govc for scheduled tasks (credentials, session lifetime etc)?

[ralfgro]

I'm at the beginning of understanding govc and it looks like a valid alternative to powercli. I'm able to login with AD credentials to my vCenter with something like "GOVC_PASSWORD=$pw govc session.login" in my govc login shell script. After that I'm not asked for credentials anymore, even after logout of the linux I created the session. I know I can use session.logout to make sure session is terminated.

My issue is the other way around. My main used case would be to use govc in a script as alternative to powercli for scheduled tasks like shutting down all VMs/hosts at a location at date xyz. Needless to say that I don't want to put a password in any file for that.

Even with extraordinary efforts in googling I did not find many examples for this use case (0 to be precise). What is the best approach for this? I see some general examples in https://github.com/vmware/govmomi/blob/main/govc/USAGE.md for session.login but I think I'm missing the context or understanding. What is the lifetime of such a session, why would I need to clone a ticket?