Leveraging WMI Scripting - Using Windows Management Instrumentation to Solve Windows Management Problems

Alain Lissoir

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 Lissoir, Alain.    Leveraging WMI Scripting / Alain Lissoir.      p. cm.    Includes index. 

ISBN 1-55558-299-0

1. Microsoft Windows (Computer file) 2. Operating systems (Computers) 3. Programming languages (Electronic computers) I. Title.

QA76.76.O63L55475 2003

005.4'469--dc21 2003043552

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I dedicate this book to my friends and my family, who didn't get the chance to see me a lot throughout these 20 months of hard work. Things will change now!

Acknowledgments

In 1997, when I joined Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), I never imagined that one day I would complete a two-volume book covering any area of technology. As withmany other IT consultants, I was busy delivering IT solutions based on Microsoft technologies for various customer projects. Life has many surprises, and the IT world is constantly changing—each change offering its own opportunities and challenges. In 1999, Compaq (which had taken over DEC and has since itself merged into HP) embarked on their Windows 2000 Academy program and allowed Compaq consultants a great chance to meet colleagues from all over the world and learn a new set of Microsoft technologies. This time was also a great opportunity to share knowledge and increase our experience. In this context, Micky Balladelli and Jan De Clercq provided great motivation for me to start writing my first official publication for Compaq. I'm really grateful to them for supporting me and giving me the guts to start my first white paper. The first publication is always the hardest. In this context, I would also like to acknowledge Tony Redmond, Vice-President and Chief Technology Officer of HP Consultancy & Integration (HPCI), for all the support he has given me since 1999 when I was still working as a local consultant in Belgium. His trust, his support, and all the opportunities he gave me, such as working at Microsoft in Redmond during the Exchange 2000 development phase and being part of his team, the HPCI Technology Leadership Group (TLG), have built my confidence and my experience for a book project.

Working with a team such as TLG is great. It is a team of talented people—a team implicitly showing you the road to follow and helping you to express capabilities that you never imagined you had. Today, I'm proud to be part of such a great team and I owe a great debt to each of my team mates for their support in creating this book about Windows Management Instrumentation. In this regard, I want to acknowledge each of the TLG members who worked with me at Compaq and HP. More specifically, I want to acknowledge the contribution of Aric Bernard (US) for giving me the marvelous chance to rebuild my lab almost every month with the new Windows.NET Server builds; Pierre Bijaoui (FR) for providing me with some hardware resources and his advice about the book publishing and editing process; Jerry Cochran (US) for acting as a bridge between Microsoft in Redmond and me in Brussels; Jan De Clercq (BE) for showing me the way to approach writing white papers, articles, and, last, a book; Olivier D'hose (BE) for his constant support, his concern, and the delicious northwest smoked salmon strips; Dung Hoang Khac (FR) for his help with the Chinese mafia; Kevin Laahs (SCO) for his thorough reviews, sharing loads and ideas about my ADCchecker project; Donald Livengood (US) for saving my life in a road bend in Lexington, Massachusetts; Kieran McCorry (IR) for the good laughs we had in Orlando; Emer McKenna (IR) for the thorough reviews she gave me; Daragh Morrissey (IR) for sharing his insights about Microsoft clusters; and John Rhoton (AT) for saving my life (once more!) in an incredible hailstorm in Nice on a beautiful day in September. All these people gave me, sometimes without even knowing it, invaluable help in completing this book.

I also want to acknowledge the TLG management for their support and for the understanding they always demonstrated during 20 months of work. Being part of TLG involves you in many activities, such as customer projects and workshops, knowledge-sharing activities; and delivering presentations at major IT industry events, such as the Microsoft Exchange Conference (MEC), IT Forum, TechED, and DECUS, to name a few. This doesn't leave much time to write a book during normal work hours, so most writing is done during weekends, vacations, and airplane travels. Having management support is a great asset when you are trying to balance everything that's expected of you. Therefore, I want to acknowledge Don Vickers, Todd Rooke, and Tony Redmond for their trust and continuous support.

Of course, the people of TLG were not the only ones who contributed to this project. My colleagues around the world helped in many ways, too. Some people helped me simply by asking technical questions and exposing their problems in our technical discussion forums. This type of knowledge sharing represents an invaluable source of information for an author, since it brings to your desk the real-world problems and situations that people are trying to solve in the field around the world. The practical and concrete approach I tried to bring to these WMI books is inspired by these contributions. In this respect, I want to acknowledge Lyn Baird (US), Eric Bidonnet (BE), Andy Cederberg (US), Warren Cooley (US), Michel Cosman (NL), Henrik Damslund (DK), Vincent D'Haene (BE), Mike Dransfield (AU), Ian Godfrey (UK), Guido Grillenmeier (DE), Gary Hall (CA), Juergen Hasslauer (DE), Ken Hendel (US), Mike Ireland (US), Henrik Joergensen (DK), John Johnson (US), Lasse Jokinen (FI), Andy Joyce (AU), Richard Joyce (IR), Patrick Kildea (US), Missy Koslosky (US), Ales Kostohryz (CZ), Stuart Ladd (US), Andr Larbi re (BE), Carey Lee (US), Paul Loonen (BE), Paul Marshall (US), Susan McDonald (BE), John McManus (UK), Kim Mikkelsen (DK), Brendan Moon (US), Joseph Neubauer (US), Gary Olsen (US), Ken Punshon (UK), Ben Santing (IR), Rudy Schockaert (BE), Terry Storey (UK), Peter Struve (DK), Jason Trimble (CA), Peter Van Hees (BE), Marc Van Hooste (BE), Michael Vogt (CH), Filip Vranckx (BE), Raymond Warichet (BE), Randy Warrens (US), and Mats Weckstrom (FI).

It's hard to write a book about Microsoft technologies without the support of the Microsoft designers, program managers, and developers in Redmond. Again, in this respect, I'm more than grateful to many Microsoft people for their interest, their support, and their contribution to this project by sharing and reviewing information despite their other commitments. People who gave me help came from various development and service teams at Microsoft, such as the Exchange team, the WMI team, the Programmability team, the MOM team, the Support Server group team, and Microsoft Consultancy Service, to name a few. In this respect, I want to acknowledge Muhammad Arrabi, Jim Benton, J. C. Cannon, Andy Cheung, Max Ciccotosto, Andrew Clinick, Andi Comisioneru, Ahmed El-Shimi, Clark Gilder, Mary Gray, Keith Hageman, Andy Harjanto, Russ Herman, Vladimir Joanovic, Pat Kenny, Stuart Kwan, Eric Lippert, Jonathan Liu, Andreas Luther, Sergei Meleshchuk, Arun Nanda, Sasha Nosov, Ajay Ramachandran, Paul Reiner, Arkady Retik, Jan Shanahan, Barry Steinglass, Greg Stemp, Sanjay Tandon, Patrick Tousignant, Deun Dex Tsaltas, and C line Van Maele.

I want to give very particular thank you to Mary Gray and Sergei Meleshchuk from Microsoft who supported me for more than 15 months via e-mail despite the heavy load of work they had. I'm even more grateful when I think that we didn't get the chance to meet for the first time until September 2002. They helped by answering questions and reviewing some of the chapters, without even knowing each other. I really appreciate the support they gave me throughout these months.

Reviewers are very important, and they bring an enormous value to a book. I admire the commitment they demonstrated by reading carefully all chapters and correcting my English and technical mistakes in these two books. I want to acknowledge Mary Gray, Kevin Laahs, Susan McDonald, Emer McKenna, and Sergei Meleshchuk for their thorough reviews. I know they suffered a lot during the readings!

Besides the Microsoft people, I also want to thank some people from the HP OpenView team for their support in sharing the information related to HP OpenView Operations for Windows (OVOW) and WMI. I want to acknowledge Viher Bogdan (SI), Jonathan Cyr (US), Drew Dimmick (US), Jerry Estep (US), Angelika Hierath (DE), Roland Hofstetter (DE), Wilhelm Klenk (DE), Siegfried Link (DE), Reinhard Merle (AU), Juergen Riedlinger (DE), and Pradeep Tapadiya (US).

In the same way, I also want to acknowledge some people from the Compaq Insight Manager team, who shared information about the Compaq Insight Management Agents. Thanks to Kevin Barnett (US), David Clay-pool (US), Brian R. Matthews (US), Mike Mckenna (US), Alan Minchew (US), Rich Purvis (US), Merriam Rudyard (US), Scott Shaffer (US), and Bernardo Tagariello (US).

Creating a book is not only about writing the technical content. The production of a book is also a long and tedious task. Having the full support of a publishing house such as Digital Press is a very important aspect of the success of a book. In this respect, I want to acknowledge Pam Chester, Theron Shreve, and Alan Rose—with particular thanks to Theron Shreve for his support when we decided to change the initial one book project to a two book project. I really appreciate his commitment and support in all the decisions we made during these 20 months.

Even if a book about Windows Management Instrumentation is purely technical, there is another form of contribution, which is almost as important as the technical contribution. In this respect, I want to acknowledge all my friends and family who supported me throughout these 20 months of hard work, despite the frustration they had of not seeing me as much as they wanted. I spent weekends, vacations, and most evenings working on this project when I was not traveling for my TLG job. Without their support, their interest, and their understanding, I would never have been able to complete this long writing effort. During 20 months of hard work, having friends and family give you their best support is a great asset. First of all, I want to acknowledge my mother, who didn't see me a lot during these past two years. Despite the difficult moments, she always demonstrated courage and understanding in regard to the small amount of time I dedicated to her. I also want to acknowledge all my friends: Elisa Araya for showing me how you can spend years writing a book between Louvain-La-Neuve in Belgium and Santiago de Chile; Caroline Bonami for her discrete presence, her compassion, concern, and interest in what I do; V ronique Burguet for her constant commitment of getting news from me; Pascale Caloens for her listening and close compassion for so long; Christian Cambier for always bringing me a realistic view in life and for his interest in what I do for 20 years; Isabelle Cliquet for her support, her listening, and concern despite her busy life; Caroline Criquilion for her involvement and compassion combined with a great sensitivity and understanding during the long talks we had together; Paul Crompton for tracking down the funniest DVDs on the market for me while I was writing; Serena De Palo for constantly asking for news about me from Italy; Ang lique Deprez for acting like a sister; Olivia Deroux for acting like a mother; Eric Henrard for showing me that you can have loads of stupid (not always that stupid, actually!) and annoying problems at work; Thierry Devroye for his friendship, his concern, and for cooking me the best french fries and T-bone steak from all over the world; Paul-Marie Fouquet, who is my best hardware advisor and supplier; Nathalie and Emilio Imparato for showing me how to prepare a delicious salad when I was following a diet and didn't have sufficient time to prepare meals due to my writing commitment; Philippe Liemans for his constant support and interest despite the difficult times he was experiencing; Sophie Lowagie for her years of friendship, Beno t-Michel Morimont for his interest in what I do; Nathalie Pinet for her friendship and involvment for 30 years; and France and Ivan Syemons for their interest in this project and the nice evenings we spent together.

The last group of people I would like to acknowledge are the people I was working with before I joined Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1997. Their continuous interest, support, and friendship for years were a great asset to my motivation. I want to thank Jean-Pierre Aerts, Philippe Foucart, Emmanuel Limage, Andr Mathy, Ounis Rachiq, Rudy Vanhaelen, and Jean-Michel Verheugen.

For 20 months, I had so many contacts with so many people around the world that I do apologize to anyone I may have inadvertently omitted. If you fall into that group, then please accept my apologies and know that I am eternally grateful for your contribution.

Without all these people behind me, it would have been impossible to complete these two books about Windows Management Instrumentation. I'm very grateful to them for being what they are to me and for simply being present before I started this, during these 20 months of work, and always.

If you have any comments or questions about the material in this book, I would be happy to hear from you. You can contact me at the following email address: <[e-mail]>.

Alain Lissoir
December 2002