WMI is a powerful technology which allows you to perform remote administrative tasks on computers. The set of available report attributes and administrative tasks are extensive. However, WMI can only be used with scripts or programming languages.
WMI has been fully integrated within Goverlan and can be used without scripting any code. WMI can be used through Goverlan to remotely administer one machine at a time using WMIX or to remotely administer large sets of machines using Scope Actions. This article explains how to use WMI via Scope Actions.
Use the WMI Objects sub-menu to access the available WMI objects and their properties. Browsing through the object properties automatically displays their description in a popup window. Selecting a WMI Task automatically prompts you for its parameters.
You can select the attributes of any WMI object to configure a scope action condition, report action or set action.
You can select the tasks of any WMI object to configure an execute action.
The list of WMI objects advertised in a Scope Action does not include all of the available WMI objects. However, you can modify this list to include any of the classes available through WMI.
Note: WMI objects contain a lot of attributes, tasks and descriptive information. The number of WMI objects in the WMIX Browser view directly impacts the time it takes to open the properties of a scope action and the system resources used by the scope action. For this reason, it is recommended that you keep the list of WMI objects under a reasonable count.
To modify the list of accessible WMI objects in a Scope Action, select the WMI Object sub-menu and click on Manage WMI Objects...
You can manage the list of available WMI objects either via WMIX or by manually configuring a list of WMI classes independently from WMIX.
Select Use a separate list.
Click on the Manage Custom List link.
Use the Manage WMI Object List window to modify the list of WMI Classes or Queries to include in the scope action.
WMIX is a tool which allows you to explore and use WMI via a graphical user interface. You can also use this tool to define the list of accessible WMI objects in the Scope Action feature.
Select Use the list of WMI Objects as defined in the Browser View of WMIX.
Click on Open WMIX to view or modify the currently configured objects.
Select the Browser View (this is the default view upon connection).
Use the view's context menu to add/remove or modify the list of root objects.
Tip: You can configure a WMI Query as a root object in WMIX. After, you can have a scope action execute the WMI query on a set of machines.
For more information on modifying WMIX root objects, refer to the WMIX user guide.