{"id":2117,"date":"2014-01-27T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-27T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2014\/01\/27\/what-is-cim-and-why-should-i-use-it-in-powershell\/"},"modified":"2022-06-20T14:44:12","modified_gmt":"2022-06-20T21:44:12","slug":"what-is-cim-and-why-should-i-use-it-in-powershell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/what-is-cim-and-why-should-i-use-it-in-powershell\/","title":{"rendered":"What is CIM and Why Should I Use It in PowerShell?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary<\/strong>: Honorary Scripting Guy and guest blogger, Trevor Sullivan, explores CIM and using it with Windows PowerShell.<\/p>\n

Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. Today we have a guest post from Trevor Sullivan. Trevor is an Honorary Scripting Guy<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>and a recognized Microsoft Community Contributor (MCC). To see more of Trevor\u2019s guest posts, see these Hey, Scripting Guy! Blog posts<\/a>.\u00a0You can reach Trevor on Twitter\u00a0(https:\/\/twitter.com\/pcgeek86<\/a>) or\u00a0follow him on his blog,\u00a0Trevor Sullivan’s Tech Room, Minding the gap between administration and development<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n Note\u00a0<\/b> This is the first in a series of five posts by Trevor where he will talk specifically about using the CIM cmdlets. Today\u2019s post provides a bit of background about CIM and explains why you will want to use this exciting technology.\n<\/p>\n

Now, here\u2019s Trevor\u2026<\/p>\n

For a long time, Microsoft has had a technology called Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) built into the Windows operating system. WMI is built on the WBEM and CIM standards from the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). System information at the hardware and software layers is exposed via a standard interface through WMI. The net result of this is the ability to easily view, and sometimes modify, system information and configuration settings.<\/p>\n

As described by the DMTF<\/a>, \u201cCIM provides a common definition of management information for systems, networks, applications and services, and allows for vendor extensions. CIM’s common definitions enable vendors to exchange semantically rich management information between systems throughout the network.\u201d<\/p>\n

WMI in early Windows PowerShell<\/h2>\n

In Windows PowerShell\u00a02.0 and Windows PowerShell\u00a01.0, Microsoft offered interaction with WMI by using built-in cmdlets and type accelerators. The following list contains some of these, although not all of them were available in PowerShell\u00a01.0:<\/p>\n