certmonger uses plaintext files to store the key and the certificate, but these keys and certificates can also be stored in NSS databases. This is done using the -d option to set the security database location and -n to give the certificate nickname which is used for the certificate in the database. These options are used instead of the PEM files given in the -f and -k options.
# ipa-getcert request -d /export/alias -n ServerCert ...