Chapter 8 -- Windows Management Instrumentation

[Previous] [Next]

Chapter 8

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is a uniform way to manage a computer system. WMI is Microsoft's implementation of a standard known as Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM), which is support by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF).

WMI can provide you with capabilities to manage your services. With WMI, you can start a service, stop it, and change its various parameters such as start mode, start name, path, and service type. WMI also has comprehensive event handling features that allow you to provide simple scripts along with your service that will alert users if, for example, the service is not running when it should be. All of WMI's management features are remoteable, so given suitable authorization, you can access them from anywhere on the network.