Afterword This is not the end

 

You’ve come a long way since you started on this journey. You’ve learned how to use PowerShell and WMI to manage many parts of your environment, including the following:

  • Computer systems and hardware
  • Performance counters and stability measures
  • Filesystem, event logs, and page files
  • Printers and scheduled jobs
  • Disk systems
  • Network configurations
  • IIS, DNS, and Hyper-V
  • The registry
  • Local accounts and groups

Is this the end? Very definitely not! WMI is constantly changing as new versions of Windows and applications are released. You need to keep on top of the changes to ensure that you can manage your systems as efficiently as possible and that you find all the new toys to play with. The real fun in all of this is getting something new to work.

The third part of this book opened the door to some of the most exciting developments of all, with the CIM APIs released in PowerShell v3 and Windows 8. With these you can create your own cmdlets from WMI objects and finally break free of the restrictions of DCOM. WMI has always been a powerful tool for performing management tasks remotely, and it has taken a huge step forward in capability with these new releases.