From MOM to SCOM

System Center Operations Manager 2007(SCOM 2007) was recently released by

Microsoft, which is a new version of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005(MoM). It

is the end - to - end service monitoring solution that lets you monitor clients,

events, services, applications, network devices rather than just servers. It

provides integration with Active Directory for user authentication and agent

discovery. Now, when a new device is added to Organizational Unit(OU),

Operations Manager 2007 can be configured to automatically detect the new device

and install agents on it. Another useful feature in Operations Manager 2007 is

'Audit Collection Services. Three components of Audit Collection Services are

Audit Collector, Audit Forwarder and Audit Database. Audit Forwarder is a part

of SCOM agent; when enabled it sends events from the security log to Audit

Collector immediately after they are written. Audit Collector is a component of

management server, which has a one - to - one connection with the audit

database.

To ensure compliance and performance, the audit database is isolated

from operations database, and only one collector can access one audit database. SCOM also lets you generate various audit reports such as Account management,

Access violation, Policy changes, and System integrity.

SCOM now comes with a web console that can be used to perform all operations

remotely. It can also be accessed through mobile devices such as Blackberry and

Windows mobile. Another thing new in SCOM is 'Client Monitoring Architecture'

that consists of Agentless Exception Monitoring, Customer Experience Improvement

Program and Management Packs for Windows-based workstations. In AEM (Agentless

Exception Monitoring) you can monitor Operating Systems and applications for

errors, without installing agents on the clients. A group policy is configured

on these clients to forward error reports to SCOM management server, instead of

sending them to Microsoft. This provides you trends of errors and failures

across the whole enterprise and helps you determine how frequently an OS or an

application gives an error. As a part of the MS Customer Experience Improvement

Program these reports can be shared with MS.

SCOM's main console alerts you immediately in case there's a failure or a critical machine being monitored

Major components of SCOM are Management Packs, which are XML files containing

monitoring settings. These packs also contain recovery and diagnostics settings

that execute automatically in case of a failure. There are several Management

Packs available for Exchange 2003, SharePoint, System Center ASP.NET 2.0, SQL

Server, Active Directory, IIS and Terminal services, which can be downloaded

from Microsoft's website. You can also import Management Packs of MOM2005 and

customize available management packs.

Installation



For running System Center Operations Manager 2007, you require Windows 2003

with atleast 1 GB of RAM, and 20 GB free hard disk space. You



will also require SQL Server 2005 with Service Pack 1, .NET Framework 2.0 and
3.0, Microsoft Core XML Services (MSXML) 6.0, SQL Reporting Services with

Service Pack 1 and Internet Information Services 6.0. However, requirements may

differ according to the components you choose to install.

Creating monitors



On the administration page, select 'Configure computers and devices' option

from the Actions pane, this will launch a wizard. The wizard will ask you to

choose automatic or advanced discovery option for discovering devices. The

automatic option will search the domain only for Windows based computers, while

in advanced option, you can choose between servers, clients and network devices.

To monitor a Windows service, open Add monitoring wizard. In the next step,

wizard will ask you to choose the monitoring type. Here select Windows Services

option. In the next step, provide which service you want to monitor, and you can

also give description of the monitoring criterions here. Now select the

management pack in which you want to save the monitor settings. It's better to

create a new management pack and then saving everything in default management

pack. Now, the wizard will ask you to specify which computers you want to

monitor for this service. Just click on Browse button and select the computers

you want to monitor for the chosen service. Next in the Service name step, click

'Create' button. Similarly, you can monitor network devices, applications,

servers using available management packs.

In System Center Operations Manager 2007, you can also create rule to collect

data from managed objects. To create a new rule, go to 'Authoring workspace'

option and expand Management Pack objects. Now, right click on the 'Rules'

option and select 'New rule.' This will open 'Create Rule' wizard, which will

ask you to choose the rule type. Let's create a sample rule for Windows

performance. To do this you expand 'Collection rules' option, and from the

Performance based menu select Windows performance option. In next step, wizard

will ask you to select the management pack in which you want to save the rule.

Now, wizard will ask you to select the target computers on which you want to

enable the rule, and select performance counter for it.

SCOM lets you monitor performance of a client for various parameters such as processing, disk space, etc

In Performance counter page, select the object such as processor for which

you want to collect performance counter data. Once the rule is created it

immediately starts operating. You can also create alerts to inform you, in case

of a failure. SCOM 2007can effectively monitor IT infrastructure of your

organization and helps you in reducing downtime.