IIS WMI Provider Tutorial

The goal of Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is to provide a common way to manage all systems (devices, resources, and applications). The Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI) were developed with the same goal in mind, but most ADSI interfaces are limited in what tasks they can perform and what information they can provide. WMI solves these problems by providing a structure that can satisfy the needs of all systems. In addition, WMI leverages the security features of Component Object Model (COM) interfaces to make managing remote computers easier and more secure. For more information, see the COM+ Software Developer Kit.

The goal of this tutorial is to prepare you to write your own IIS administration scripts by walking you through the Windows Management Instrumentation Platform SDK and the IIS WMI Provider Reference, as well as describing introductory WMI concepts and and instructing you to write basic WMI scripts.

This tutorial includes the following modules:

• Module 1: Introduction to WMI Concepts: Explains the purpose, structure, and benefits of WMI. If you are already familiar with WMI, you can skip this section.
• Module 2: Using CIM Studio and the IIS Metabase for a Clearer Picture: Explains the relationship between the IIS metabase and the structure of WMI, and compares it with the structure of ADSI. A tool called CIM Studio walks you through the IIS WMI provider and the IIS metabase at the same time.
• Module 3: Writing Administration Scripts that use WMI: References what you learned in Module 2 while writing basic WMI scripts to administer IIS metabase properties. With your scripts, you will be able to query site properties, map virtual resources to real resources, create sites and set properties, export metabase nodes, use associations to find metabase elements, and use two providers in one script.

Before You Get Started

You must start Windows Management Services to use WMI on your machine.

To start Windows Management Services

1. From the Start menu, click Run.
2. In the Open box of the Run dialog box, type net start winmgmt, and click OK.

Note To run winmgmt, you must have Administrator credentials.

Related Topics

• For complete conceptual information about the IIS WMI provider; see Using the IIS WMI Provider.
• For complete reference information about the objects and methods of the IIS WMI provider; see IIS WMI Provider Reference.
• For complete reference information for the objects and methods of all the available WMI providers; see Windows Management Instrumentation Platform SDK on MSDN.
• For complete language information for VBScript, JScript, Perl, C++,or topics on writing administration scripts; see Getting Started with ASP, Windows Script Technologies, Active Scripting with PerlScript, the Programmatic Administration Guide, and Code Examples to Configure Metabase Properties.