SMS: View Troubleshooting Information in Administrator Console

All of the data displayed in the SMS Administrator console is provided by the Systems Management Server Site Provider through Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). The SMS Administrator console can be started in Node Information mode, which displays the source of and all the values behind every property page available in the user interface.

To operate the Administrator Console in Node Information mode, start the console with the following command line: This will add an extra property page (tab) called Node Information to every property sheet.

The Node Information property page displays the underlying WMI (Web-Based Enterprise Management) class with all its properties and instance information, which is useful for debugging for two reasons:

• When coding applications using the Systems Management Server Toolkit, it is often helpful to use the SMS Administrator console as an example of how information can be exposed and manipulated through the Site Provider.
• One of the properties exposed in the Node Information will be the ID of the property's instance. When troubleshooting problems related to collections, packages, advertisements, job requests, and so forth, the ID of the instance is noted in the log file and sometimes the status message. Since IDs are not identified by default in the SMS Administrator console, the Node Information property page is the only way to easily identify the the object ID. For example, for collections, the it will be called CollectionId.

For additional information on WMI, please refer to the WBEMSDK and the SMS ToolKit on-line documentation.

When the Administrator Console Is Run from a Remote Workstation

where D is your Systems Management Server administrator console installation folder.