PowerShell has two different sets of commands dedicated to working with WMI.

The CIM cmdlets were introduced with PowerShell 3.0. They are compatible with the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) standard DSP0004. A move towards compliance with open standards is critical as the Microsoft world becomes more diverse.

WMI itself is a proprietary implementation of the CIM server using the Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM), API to communicate between client and server.

Standards compliance and differences in approach aside, there are solid practical reasons to consider when choosing which to use.

The CIM cmdlets:

• Handle date conversion natively
• Have a flexible approach to networking. They use WSMAN for remote connections by default, but can be configured to use DCOM over RPC

The WMI cmdlets:

• Do not automatically convert dates
• Use DCOM over RPC
• Can be used for all WMI operations
• Have been superseded by the CIM cmdlets