How do i use wmi

The system performance library counters are converted to WMI classes. For more information, see Monitoring Performance Data. This approach creates an unmanaged COM provider.

This approach creates a managed code provider. Managed code providers can be written in any. However, the. Using the provider framework classes is not recommended. NET Framework providers. The following table lists the topics that describe how to use COM or.

The following topics provide information about using WMI to monitor and control enterprise components. Feedback will be sent to Microsoft: By pressing the submit button, your feedback will be used to improve Microsoft products and services. Privacy policy. Skip to main content. This browser is no longer supported. Download Microsoft Edge More info. Contents Exit focus mode.

Is this page helpful? Accessed from the application-side by the WMI API, the Object Manager forwards requests for data to the WMI providers and receives the reply before forwarding the information back to the requesting management application. These respond via the classes and methods with data such as system uptime or the number of running processes. Typically, a WMI consumer is either a monitoring application, such as PRTG Network Monitor, a management application, or a script, such as a PowerShell script, which queries values on a remote system before carrying out some action like updating software or writing a file.

For example, an administrator scripting an update can first use PowerShell to query a WMI provider to check the Windows version before sending the update. The consumer may query WMI providers for values that can be monitored or even altered by an administrator.

Only certain values are writable in this way. The ability to remotely access and modify device information and data must be secured. Windows provides several layers of security that protect remote systems. If WMI is blocked by the firewall, a connection cannot be established. In many circumstances, methods and classes of WMI providers access privileged data and require higher access permissions to run properly. Although WMI can be used via several scripting languages, including PowerShell, it does have its own command-line interface.

To use, simply type wmic and the command. The SET command can change or write to certain parameters. For example, it is possible to set the current time zone using the set os command. According to Microsoft, MI is fully compatible with earlier versions of WMI and offers reduced development time and tighter integration with PowerShell.

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Customer Login. Search Search. Back to index. Content 1. What is WMI? WMI Architecture 5. Security 6. PowerShell and WMI 7. But once you start querying remote computers, it's not only additional processing time to return that information, but also additional unnecessary information to have to pull across the network.

Get-CimInstance has a Property parameter that limits the information that's retrieved. This makes the query to WMI more efficient. The previous results returned an object. To return a simple string, use the ExpandProperty parameter. You could also use the dotted style of syntax to return a simple string.

This eliminates the need to pipe to Select-Object. I'm still running PowerShell as a local admin who is a domain user. When I try to query information from a remote computer using the Get-CimInstance cmdlet, I receive an access denied error message.

Many people have security concerns when it comes to PowerShell, but the truth is you have exactly the same permissions in PowerShell as you do in the GUI. No more and no less. The problem in the previous example is that the user running PowerShell doesn't have rights to query WMI information from the DC01 server. But, trust me, that isn't a good idea because then anything that I run from PowerShell would be running as a domain admin.

That could be dangerous from a security standpoint depending on the situation. Using the principle of least privilege, I elevate to my domain admin account on a per command basis using the Credential parameter, if a command has one. Get-CimInstance doesn't have a Credential parameter so the solution in this scenario is to create a CimSession first.

Notice that I also specified the Get-Credential cmdlet in parentheses so that it executes first, prompting me for alternate credentials, before creating the new session. I'll show you another more efficient way to specify alternate credentials later in this chapter, but it's important to understand this basic concept before making it more complicated. There are several additional benefits to using CIM sessions instead of just specifying a computer name. When running multiple queries to the same computer, using a CIM session is more efficient than using the computer name for each query.

Creating a CIM session only sets up the connection once.