WMI: Windows Management Instrumentation

I was given a task to compare the latest software installed on mane server. Looking at the task though it sounds very simple that  we can compare the list form Control panel and add remove programs.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc776518(v=ws.10).aspx

However, it involves many hours job when it comes to servers. I came across the term WMI which gives you extended functionality to extract such reports.

First of all its important o know about what is WMI: Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is the infrastructure for management data and operations on Windows-based operating systems. You can write WMI scripts or applications to automate administrative tasks on remote computers but WMI also supplies management data to other parts of the operating system and products, for example System Center Operations Manager, formerly Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM), or Windows Remote Management (WinRM).

Courtesy: msdn.microsoft.com

You can use WMI from client applications and scripts. It provides an infrastructure that makes it easy to both discover and perform management tasks. In addition, you can add to the set of possible management tasks by creating your own WMI providers.

Courtesy: msdn.microsoft.com

Extracting the information of all updates and hotfixes from command promot:

wmic qfe list brief /format:htable > "%USERPROFILE%\hotfix.html"

This produces a nicely formatted list in an HTML file named hotfix.html that gets placed in the User folder.

Reference:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/4197.how-to-list-all-of-the-windows-and-software-updates-applied-to-a-computer.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394582(v=vs.85).aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa393964(v=vs.85).aspx

Applies to: SharePoint Server 2010, Windows Server 2008.