Appendix B. WMI reference

 

This appendix supplies a collection of WMI-related reference material to help you when writing PowerShell scripts that use WMI.

B.1. Useful WMI namespaces

There are a number of WMI namespaces that you’ll often use. These are collected in table B.1.

Table B.1. Useful WMI namespaces

Namespace

Comments

Root\cim2 Default WMI namespace; contains the majority of the Win32 classes
Root\wmi Contains many hardware-related classes but is mainly undocumented
root\MicrosoftDNS DNS server management
root\virtualization Hyper-V management
Root\MSCluster Cluster
Root\MicrosoftNLB NLB management
Root\webadministration IIS management
root\StandardCimv2 New classes introduced with Windows 8; drives many of the new modules
root\Hardware Hardware-related data
root\Microsoft\Windows\dns PowerShell v3 DNS client configuration and utilities
root\Microsoft\Windows\PowerShellv3 Information on PowerShell modules
root\Microsoft\Windows\Storage Windows storage server management
root\Microsoft\Windows\Smb SMB management

B.2. Useful classes

The list in table B.2 doesn’t include classes from specific providers, such as DNS or IIS. Those namespaces should be investigated directly. All classes are in the root\cimv2 namespace unless stated otherwise.

B.3. WQL