Great article from the Powershell team blog:
Introduction to CIM Cmdlets
PowerShell 3.0 shipping with Windows server 2012 and Windows 8 brings a new set of Cmdlets to manage any server or device that complies with CIM and WS-Man standards defined by DMTF. In this blog post we will explore these new Cmdlets and how can they help IT Pros in managing a datacenter.
The list of new Cmdlets is given in the table below:
| Cmdlet | Purpose |
| Get-CimInstance | Gets instances of a class. |
| New-CimInstance | Creates a new instance of a class. |
| Remove-CimInstance | Removes one of more instances of a class. |
| Set-CimInstance | Modifies one or more instances of a class. |
| Get-CimAssociatedInstance | Gets all the associated instances for a particular instance. |
| Invoke-CimMethod | Invokes instance or static method of a class. |
| Get-CimClass | Gets class schema of a CIM class. |
| Register-CimIndicationEvent | Helps subscribe to events. |
| New-CimSession | Creates a CIM Session with local or a remote machine |
| Get-CimSession | Gets a list of CIM Sessions that have been made. |
| Remove-CimSession | Removes CimSessions that are there on a machine. |
| New-CimSessionOption | Creates a set of options that can be used while creating a CIM session. |
Basic terminology
If you are already familiar with terms like WMI, CIM, WinRM and WS-Man, you can skip this section.
CIM: Common Information Model (CIM) is the DMTF standard [DSP0004] for describing the structure and behavior of managed resources such as storage, network, or software components.
WMI: Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is a CIM server that implements the CIM standard on Windows.
WS-Man: WS-Management (WS-Man) protocol is a SOAP-based, firewall-friendly protocol for management clients to communicate with CIM servers.
WinRM: Windows Remote Management (WinRM) is the Microsoft implementation of the WS-Man protocol on Windows.
