Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)

Windows Management Instrumentation is Microsoft’s implementation of the Web-based Enterprise Management. WBEM is an open standards system management technology for managing distributed computing environments, and WMI is a kernel-level technology for managing devices in a Microsoft environment.

Windows Management Instrumentation can be used to gather management information about the OS, hardware and software, local/remote system status and properties, configuration and security details, process/service scheduling information, back-up and logging. The technology comes preinstalled on all Windows operating systems starting from Windows 2000.

Windows Management Instrumentation provides the network monitoring software with management information collected by the WBEM providers (these DLLs monitor and collect information from devices). The various providers then use the CIM database for storing the information, from where it can be retrieved by the management software.

Network monitoring software uses WMI monitoring for managing Windows infrastructure. WhatsUp Gold has incorporated customizable WMI monitors in its Premium, Distributed and MSP versions. This allows administrators to have a unified view of all Windows components, and monitor the health of Windows systems, servers, and applications like MS Exchange and SQL Server.