Quick Blog: Grabbing basic machine info with PowerShell

The other day I needed to track down how much RAM a couple of our servers had installed.  A few days later I needed to verify that a couple of them were in fact 64-bit and not 32-bit.  I decided I wanted to be able to get at this basic info any time that I wanted without having to remember all the syntax so I built it into a PowerShell function.

Building a PowerShell function is almost as easy easier than building a stored procedure around a select statement in SQL.  The reason PowerShell is easier than SQL is that when you have a parameter that you are passing in, you can give it a data type, but you don’t have to.

For the function below I gave it a default value of the local machine but you can pass in a machine name that you are trying to get to.

Just copy the code below into an ISE window and hit F5.

function Get-MachineInfo($ServerName="localhost")             
{            
get-wmiobject win32_computersystem -ComputerName $ServerName |            
select DNSHostName, Manufacturer, Model, SystemType ,             
        @{Name="TotalPhysicalMemoryInMB";Expression={"{0:n2}" -f($_.TotalPhysicalMemory/1mb)}},             
        NumberOfLogicalProcessors, NumberOfProcessors, CurrentTimeZone, DaylightInEffect            
}# End Get-MachineInfo

After you’ve done that, to call the stored proc function simply type in the name ( Get-MachineInfo ) to the prompt at the bottom and hit enter