Leveraging WMI Scripting. Using Windows Management Instrumentation to Solve Windows Management Problems

951 Pages·2003·66.324 MB·English

by  Alain Lissoir (Auth.)

Leveraging WMI Scripting
Using Windows Management Instrumentation to
Solve Windows Management Problems
Alain Lissoir
Digital Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lissoir, Main.
Leveraging WMI Scripting / Main Lissoir.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 1-55558-299-0
1. Microsoft Windows (Computer file) 2. Operating systems (Computers) 3. Programming
languages (Electronic computers) I. Title.
QA76.76.O63L55475 2003
005.4'469--dc21 2003043552
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I dedicate this book to my friends and my family,
who didn't get the chance to see me a lot throughout
these 20 months of hard work. Things will change now!
Foreword
Main Lissoir's first book, Understanding WMI Scripting, did a fine job of
setting the foundation for system administrators who want to come to grips
with WMI and comprehend where WMI might be usefully deployed to
solve management problems.
This book is different, because Main now attempts to bring the reader
on a journey where he demonstrates how to put WMI into practice. His
approach is exhaustive, yet while the sheer number of examples might be
off-putting to the casual reader, they represent a huge treasure trove of code,
which can be employed by the administrator who really wants to put WMI
to work.
For me, the most interesting parts of the book are those that address
security and applications. Windows is a great operating system, but no
operating system is much good if it is insecure or doesn't do a good job of
supporting applications. Manageability is an important part of applications,
so it's great to see that Microsoft and independent software vendors have
invested to build WMI providers for applications, and it is even better that
these can be combined together in a secure manner. There is no doubt that
you can expect to see more applications added to the set that supports WMI
in the future, so think of this part of the book as your entrde to an area that
will expand.
To repeat some comments I made in the foreword of Mains previous
book, I don't have much time for those who insist on recreating the wheel. I
think you'll find that you can do much more than you realized to extract
data from applications, understand what's really happening on your servers,
and get real work done as you dip into the depth of knowledge and Mains
experience of real-world problems found here.
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xvi Foreword
I know Main has worked very hard to bring this book together and build
on the strong foundation set in the first book. Practical and straightforward
advice is always valuable and this book~even on a standalone basis~is an
asset that any enterprise Windows administrator can learn from.
Enjoy!
Tony Redmond
Chief Technology Officer
HP Consulting and Integration
Preface
This book is the second one dedicated to Windows Management Instru-
mentation (WMI) scripting. In the first book, Understanding WMI Script-
ing (ISBN 1555582664), we discovered the Windows scripting
environment and the WMI architecture with its set of supported tools. We
also learned the WMI Query Language (WQL) and the WMI COM
Scripting API in order to understand the various WMI scripting tech-
niques.
In this second book, which continues the WMI discovery started in the
first book, we dive deeper into the WMI world to understand the real-
world manageable entities of the Windows world. Basically, we discover in a
structured way the most important WMI providers available from Win-
dows NT 4.0 to Windows Server 2003 (including Windows 2000 and
Windows XP). This discovery will extensively use the knowledge gathered
throughout the first book to build real-world scripted management solu-
tions. As with the first book, this second book dedicated to WMI is based
on an important concept: learning by practice. Based on your previous
experiences with WMI, if you understand the WMI concepts and have
mastered the WMI scripting techniques related to the WMI data retrieval
and WMI events monitoring, you can use this second book on a standalone
basis. However, if you are new to the WMI world, I strongly recommend
that you start with the first book to gather a base knowledge about WMI.
The information contained in this book is organized in six chapters.
(cid:12)9 Chapter 1 covers the WMI providers discovery. The chapter explains
how the WMI providers are registered in the CIM repository and
how to locate them by scripts. This WMI providers discovery tech-
nique will be quite useful in understanding the WMI providers capa-
bilities with the WMI classes they support. This technique will also
allow you to discover any new future CIM extensions by yourself and
to understand some aspects of the available WMI providers that are
xvii
xviii Preface
not always documented in the Software Developer Kits (SDK).
Although we will not dive into the WMI providers implementation
in depth, it is useful to understand their capabilities, since they also
determine the behavior of the WMI classes they support.
Chapter 2 covers everything that is related to the Win32 providers. In
this chapter, and based on the knowledge acquired from the first
book, we will discuss how to retrieve hardware information from the
system, customize the page file, the operating system settings, and the
system registry to name a few examples. Basically, we will discuss how
to manage from WMI scripts everything that is related to the core
operating system settings.
(cid:12)9 Chapter 3 covers all WMI providers that are part of the core Operat-
ing System WMI installation. For instance, we will see how to script
on top of the WMI classes supported by the Active Directory provid-
ers, the SNMP providers, the forwarding event providers, and the
Trust monitoring providers, to name a few. By examining the pro-
vider capabilities and the classes they support, we will see how they
can be used to develop WMI scripts directly applicable in the field for
day-to-day management tasks.
(cid:12)9 Chapter 4 is related to the WMI security enhancements and the
WMI security scripting techniques. In this chapter, we will discuss
how security descriptors are structured and how to script them to
manage the security settings. This chapter is one of the most complex
chapters, since it covers a difficult topic, which consists of manipulat-
ing Access Control Lists (ACL) and Access Control Entries (ACE) of
the security descriptors protecting access to the manageable real-
world entities. We will see how to retrieve, decipher, modify, and
update from WMI and ADSI scripts the security descriptor of file
system objects, Active Directory objects, Exchange 2000 mailbox,
registry entries, and WMI namespaces created in the CIM repository.
This chapter also contains some hints related to the Internet Informa-
tion Server (IIS) configuration when running ASP WMI-enabled
scripts. Last but not least, due the security push made by Microsoft in
early 2002, we will see how Windows Server 2003 has been updated
regarding the WMI security and how this initiative affects people
scripting on top of WMI.
Chapter 5 is related to the optional components of the Windows
platform and Windows applications supporting WMI. Under Win-
dows Server 2003, optional components, such as Terminal Services
(TS) or Network Load Balancing (NLB), come with a WMI provider
Preface xix
to extend their management capabilities from WMI. We will also
consider the most common Windows applications, such as Internet
Information Server (IIS) version 6.0, Exchange 2000, and SQL 2000.
This chapter will also discuss the Enterprise Management Solutions
that also offer some WMI support as providers and as consumers.
This includes, for instance, HP OpenView Operation Manager for
Windows (OVOW) version 7.0 or Microsoft Operation Manager
(MOM) version 1.0. The chapter also considers the WMI support
regarding the Microsoft .NET Framework. Because the scripting
techniques are extensively described in the previous chapter, this last
chapter will only focus on the functional aspects supported by the
WMI providers with their related classes.
Chapter 6 finishes this book by giving some hints about the WMI
scripting future. What's coming up? What will the Windows manage-
ment and scripting future look like? Of course, the goal is just to
share a view of this possible future, since Microsoft could reconsider
any features during the development phase.
Last but not least, this second book contains more than 250 script sam-
ples. They can be downloaded for free from http://www.LissWare.Net.
Now, let's dive further into the WMI discovery by examining how to
locate and understand the WMI providers capabilities available under Win-
dows.
I Preface
Some Useful Scripts
In the first book, Understanding WMI Scripting, we have seen what WMI is
and how to script on top of the WMI scripting API. Some of the scripts
developed throughout this first book are available in the appendix of this
second book for information completeness. Therefore, if some scripting
techniques are referring to these script samples, the full listing is available
for reference in the appendix. However, for more detailed explanations, I
recommend that you refer to the first book, Understanding WMI Scripting
(ISBN 1555582664). For those of you having strong WMI experience and
who didn't read the first book, here is the list of the reused scripts with their
respective purpose:
Sample 4.6, "Retrieving all instances of the Win32_Service class with
their properties" called InstancesOfObjectClassWithAPI.wsf.
Sample 4.14, "Setting one read/write property of a Win32_Registry
class instance directly" called SetWin32_RegistrySizeWithAPI
(Direct Properties).wsf.
Sample 4.15, "Setting one read/write property of a Win32_Registry
class instance indirectly" called SetWin32_RegistrySizeWithAPI
(Indirect Properties).wsf.
Sample 4.30, 'Tk generic routine to display the SWbemPropertySet
object" called DisplaylnstanceProperties.vbs.
Sample 4.31, "Browsing the namespaces to find class definitions"
called BrowseNameSpaceForClassWithAPI.wsf.
Sample 4.32, "A Windows Script File self-documenting the CIM
repository classes in an Excel sheet" called LoadCIMinXL.wsf.
Sample 6.14, 'Tk generic script for synchronous event notification"
called GenericEventSyncConsumer.wsf.
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xxii Some Useful Scripts
Sample 6.17, "A generic script for asynchronous event notification"
called GenericEventAsyncConsumer.wsf.
Samples 6.18 through 6.21, "Monitoring, managing, and alerting
script for the Windows services" called ServiceMonitor.wsf.
For reference, you will find the listing of these scripts in the appendix.