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 the client and server.

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

Some properties of CIM cmdlets are as follows:

• They are available in both Windows PowerShell and PowerShell Core.
• They handle date conversion natively.
• They have a flexible approach to networking. They use WSMAN for remote connections by default, but can be configured to use DCOM over RPC.

Some properties of WMI cmdlets are as follows:

• They are only available in Windows PowerShell, not in PowerShell Core
• They do not automatically convert dates
• They use DCOM over RPC exclusively
• They can be used for all WMI operations
• They have been superseded by the CIM cmdlets