We are independent & ad-supported. We may earn a commission for purchases made through our links.
Advertiser Disclosure
Our website is an independent, advertising-supported platform. We provide our content free of charge to our readers, and to keep it that way, we rely on revenue generated through advertisements and affiliate partnerships. This means that when you click on certain links on our site and make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn more.
How We Make Money
We sustain our operations through affiliate commissions and advertising. If you click on an affiliate link and make a purchase, we may receive a commission from the merchant at no additional cost to you. We also display advertisements on our website, which help generate revenue to support our work and keep our content free for readers. Our editorial team operates independently of our advertising and affiliate partnerships to ensure that our content remains unbiased and focused on providing you with the best information and recommendations based on thorough research and honest evaluations. To remain transparent, we’ve provided a list of our current affiliate partners here.
Software

Our Promise to you

Founded in 2002, our company has been a trusted resource for readers seeking informative and engaging content. Our dedication to quality remains unwavering—and will never change. We follow a strict editorial policy, ensuring that our content is authored by highly qualified professionals and edited by subject matter experts. This guarantees that everything we publish is objective, accurate, and trustworthy.

Over the years, we've refined our approach to cover a wide range of topics, providing readers with reliable and practical advice to enhance their knowledge and skills. That's why millions of readers turn to us each year. Join us in celebrating the joy of learning, guided by standards you can trust.

What Is Windows Management Instrumentation?

By Jo Dunaway
Updated: May 16, 2024
Views: 6,492
Share

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is a management facility resident in Windows operating systems and used in business environment systems control rooms. It allows for remote management of local and remote computers and receiving event notifications from event logs on remote systems. These functions can be exceedingly useful to system administrators, information systems techs, and operations managers. If a system administrator needs to know a particular remote computer’s list of installed hot fixes or needs to install an upgrade of a printer driver or make changes to a sysem registry, WMI is the facility for the tasks. An operations manager can schedule processes to run at particular times on remote computers, and access lists of dynamic management data from client programs on remote computers.

If a system administrator has namespace rights to a remote-enabled system, then he or she can log in to the remote system using his or her own administrator credentials. As long as the administrator has access privileges, he or she can do anything on a remote computer that a local operator of that computer can do. When accessing more than one remote computer, an administrator would use what is called “delegation” to forward authentication on to subsequent computers.

Using C++, C#, or .NET Frameworks scripting languages with Windows Management Instrumentation, a control operator can write provider scripts and automation procedures to perform many management tasks on remote computers that are based on Windows Management Instrumentation functions. Although there are over 100 provider scripts resident in more recent Windows operating systems, many businesses are developing different ones in a drive to increase security and make scripts more responsive to individual business. Tests of users of remote systems are there for use in determining the predictability quotient of employees in ease of use and familiarity with using Windows components as well as several other management tasks in a logical and unified interface. Third-party vendors make user interfaces for WMI with scripting functions as well.

If an administrator needs to know the processes running on a remote system, he or she would query the system with a WMI class called Win32_Process. Similarly, Win32_TimeZone is a Windows Management Instrumentation class that specifies time zone information on a system. There are built-in class queries in Windows Management Instrumentation that allow interrogation of remote systems for individual queries; however, sometimes it is necessary to combine class scripts to find out, for example, how much available memory is being used by the remote system. There is a tool called CIM Studio that allows browsing through Windows Management Instrumentation classes.

Share
EasyTechJunkie is dedicated to providing accurate and trustworthy information. We carefully select reputable sources and employ a rigorous fact-checking process to maintain the highest standards. To learn more about our commitment to accuracy, read our editorial process.
Discussion Comments
Share
https://www.easytechjunkie.com/what-is-windows-management-instrumentation.htm
Copy this link
EasyTechJunkie, in your inbox

Our latest articles, guides, and more, delivered daily.

EasyTechJunkie, in your inbox

Our latest articles, guides, and more, delivered daily.