Well I have been off for a while but I am starting up again and I have decided to move this blog to a new location for various reasons. A change is as good as a rest they say. Also as MOM is changing to System Center Operations Manager and there are more System Center products I thought it was time to expand to those areas that will link into MOM or SCOM as it will become.

 

For all of those who have read and enjoyed this blog I hope you enjoy the new one. Especially those of you who kept this blog in your reader for so long without an update!

 

New location:-

 

 

Ian

A much requested feature from MOM 2000. But there are quirks with it.

 

It is recommended that when servers are being worked that they be put into maintenance mode. This prevents the console from receiving new alerts from that server while it is being worked on. The console also shows that the server is in maintenance mode by showing a small spanner by the server’s name.

 

There are three methods of putting a server into maintenance mode. This can be done via the console gui or via a choice of two command line utilities. These are MOMinfo.exe which is part of the MOM 2005 Resource Kit and MaintenaceModeUtility.exe which is provided as part of the MOM 2005 SDK.

 

1. Console GUI

 

In the console right click on the server and click “Put Computer in Maintenance Mode”. In the dialogue box there is a box for the reason and a choice of putting the server into maintenance for a duration in minutes or putting it in maintenance mode until a specific end time. Note that there is no ability to schedule a start time.

 

Once in maintenance mode the server will display the spanner icon and stay in that mode until the time set. If maintenance is finished early then the server can be right clicked again and chose “Remove Computer From Maintenance Mode”. You will be asked to confirm that.

 

If the work needs to carry beyond the original end time then right click and chose “Update Maintenance Mode Duration” and you will see the same dialogue box as when you first put the server into maintenance mode.

 

2. Command Line

 

The difference between the two utilities is that MOMinfo.exe works at the agent whereas MaintenaceModeUtility.exe works at the MOM server and is generally the preferred method.

 

2a. MOMINFO

 

This utility is also used for dumping rules that the agent is running, clearing queues and enable script debugging.

 

MOMInfo.exe /maintenancemode:<timeout>

 

The time is in seconds and if no time is set it defaults to -1 which is infinite. Run the utility set to “exit” to remove the server from maintenance mode.

e.g.       MOMInfo.exe /maintenancemode:exit

 

Optional           /server:<servername> to run it on a remote server.

 

If no server is chosen then it defaults to the server that it is installed on.

 

Because this tool initiates the communication from the agent, if the agent cannot contact the MOM server, the agent will not appear to be in maintenance mode in the console.

 

This is best run as a scheduled task when you know that maintenance work will be done and the length of time.

 

2b. MaintenaceModeUtility

 

This is provided as a VB project to compile and also to alter to suit your requirements. However a compiled version exists at

 

http://www.momsolutions.org/Tools/MaintenanceModeUtility/Maintenance.htm

 

Version 1.0 is the sample code compiles and version 1.01 has been altered to add a timeflag. Copy the exe and the dll to a directory on the MOM server’s hard disk.

 

MaintenanceModeUtility -a DOMAIN ServerName 120

 

The time is in minutes. This is generally more useful that mominfo which is in seconds.

 

Usage:

MaintenanceModeUtility.exe -l|-g|-a|-r [ComputerGroupName time]|[ComputerDomain ComputerName time]

 

-l: lists all computers in maintenance mode.

-g: lists available computer groups.

-a: places computers in maintenance mode.

-r: removes computers from maintenance mode.

 

Examples:

MaintenanceModeUtility.exe -l

MaintenanceModeUtility.exe -g

MaintenanceModeUtility.exe -a ComputerGroupToAdd time

MaintenanceModeUtility.exe -r ComputerGroupToRemove time

MaintenanceModeUtility.exe -a DOMAIN ComputerToAdd time

MaintenanceModeUtility.exe -r DOMAIN ComputerToRemove time

 

Again this is best run as a scheduled task when you know that maintenance work will be done and the length of time.

 

Tip 1

 

As this utility has the ability to run against a computer group you can set these groups up and have a scheduled task for each group if there is always the same maintenance window. Alternatively have the one scheduled task with the computer group and change the date and time to start as required and include a list of servers in the group for that particular work window.

 

Tip 2

 

Justin Harter has written a script that will create a scheduled job on the fly and then delete itself when finished.

 

Info and script at

http://spaces.msn.com/jharter/blog/cns!39CE28DB5474A6C7!293.entry

 

I have found the easiest way to keep up to date with new KB alerts for MOM and other products is to sign up for e-mail notifications from KBAlertz.

 

 

Add your e-mail and a password and chose as many categories as you like to get regular e-mails informing you when Microsoft has released a KB on that subject (the content is aslo included in the e-mail).  And it is free. The only downside is that if you sign up for multiple technologies then they all come in a single e-mail.

 

They also have an RSS feed for MOM 2005 KB articles

 

The MOM 2005 page at Microsoft is

 

which has the KB search box already pre filtered for MOM 2005.

 

I find KBAlertz easier to use.

 

Stefan did say that the updated Resource Kit for MOM 2005 SP1 will be out soon and Rob Stevens (Microsoft) has mentioned it on his blog and here it is

http://www.microsoft.com/mom/downloads/2005/reskit/default.mspx 

 

A quick glance and it looks very similar to the 2000 resource kit but there are some neat new tools.

 

Alert to RSS Utility: Now subscribe to alerts via RSS!

I love this error from the Exchange BPA MP.

  

"The Exchange 2003 server X is running Service Pack 2, which is yet to be released."

 

 

Have you ever wondered where MOM came from? It started with Sentry which was bought by Mission Critical Software. They appear to be the ones that that named it OnePoint and even today that name still exists as the MOM database in MOM 2005. It was also the name of the service in MOM 2000.

 

Mission Critical was bought by NetIQ and they named it Operations Manager. NetIQ then had two products in their portfolio that overlapped - AppManager and OM. Although both are designed to do server monitoring AM is more aimed at subject matter experts who are script savvy and can drop scripts onto servers to dig into what is going on and OM was rule based and could monitor a lot of servers without needing to know about scripting.

 

A number of years ago now Microsoft decided to get into the server management market to complement SMS. Microsoft showed that Windows 2000 could scale to UNIX workloads with the TCP benchmarks but manageability in a data centre was a big thing. From discussions I had with some the guys involved it was a choice of do they build from scratch or buy. They decided to buy as that would take some time off getting into the market with a mature product. After looking around they decided on OM. It was used internally by MS IT and was built on SQL and COM+ so it was easier to bring it in house. OM v3.3 was bought from NetIQ in 2000 with the plan being to rebrand it and sell it. That did not happen as there were too many issues with it for MS to send it out so it took about 6 months before it was ready. As a by product of this the scalability went up from a couple of hundred agents to 1000 agents. Part of the agreement was to do joint marketing with NetIQ and NetIQ would produce management packs. After a while NetIQ’s focus went more onto security and they continued to sell AppManager and defocus on MOM add-ons.

 

MOM 2000 RTM was in June 2001, although the Application Management Pack (AMP), which had the management packs for Exchange, SQL and others,  was not released until a few months later. Then the pricing was $849 RRP per processor for the base pack (BMP) and $949 per processor for the AMP. So an 8 way SQL Server would need 8 x BMP and 8 x AMP. A price promotion for 6 months was put into effect and that meant the BMP and AMP were $349 per processor each and the 6 months promotion turned into a permanent price.

 

When MOM 2005 came out there was another change in licensing and this time it was priced per server and there was no AMP style licence. The MOM server was priced at $729 RRP and the managed device was $539. This license is called an OML – Operations Manager Licence. In effect very similar to a CAL. So the 8 way SQL Server which would originally have cost $14,384 for MOM 2000 to manage and then dropped to $5,584 with the discounted pricing becomes $539 with MOM 2005. A steal – and that is before discounts. And even more amazingly this is the price per physical server so if you are using MOM with virtual servers you only need an OML for the physical box even if you have multiple virtual servers each with their own agent (except Workgroup Edition).

 

Before MOM 2005 though there was MOM 2000 SP1 which was released in January 2003. Although called a service pack it was actually more like a new release and should have been called MOM 2003. There was no SP that you could take and upgrade an existing MOM 2000 installation. You needed the whole MOM 2000 SP1 CD and more or less did an upgrade.

 

MOM 2005 started life as MOMX then MOM 2004 before being called MOM 2005. As well as the full product which was RTMed in August 2005 there was a new version called Workgroup Edition. This does not have any reporting, no MOM Connector Framework (MCF) and is limited to 10 agents (even virtual ones unlike the full MOM). In its favour is its price - $499 which includes the MOM server and 10 agents. And if you use the free MSDE database then it costs you less than $50 per server and you can use all the MOM management packs. As an example of the changing face of MOM pricing, if you are responsible for 10 x 8 way SQL servers with MOM 2000 it would have originally cost $143,840 which was then dropped to a new price of $55,840. With MOM 2005, which is a better product, the price became $5,390 to manage your 10 servers but if you can do without the reporting you can use Workgroup Edition and manage all 10 for $499. Talk about commoditisation.

 

MOM 2005 SP1 was released for download on 1^st August 2005. Unlike MOM 2000 SP1 this was a service pack and was released as a proper bug fix SP. Pity they did not mention the dependency on MSI v3.1 until later!

 

In the meantime there are been many new management packs and add-ons from Microsoft and partners.

 

MOM v3 (I think it should be called MOM v4) is in private beta at the moment but a public beta should be available for (or just after) the Microsoft Management Summit held in April 2006 in San Diego rather than Las Vegas. I prefer San Diego myself. And the MOM team look to be on track to release it in Q4 2006. The next chapter – I think it will be a good one.

Having had my ADSL bandwidth increased from 512 Kbs to 2 Mbs (great for downloading large files) brought to mind one of the frequently asked questions that comes up - how much bandwidth does MOM take up over a WAN. And the answer is – it depends. When you first install MOM and you push the agent out then that will take about 6 MB to get the agent installed and then there is the management packs to download.

 

The reason this comes up is that in Europe there are still a lot of companies with small WAN pipes – especially if they have offices in Eastern Europe. Bandwidth seems to be so cheap and pervasive in the US that sometimes you feel that the product groups in Redmond don’t get it. I was having a talk with Omar, from the MOM product group, about this when MOM 2005 was in beta and he was telling me that they had one customer in the TAP program that had very low bandwidth. He said that it was as low as 64 Kbs. Well for some European organisations that is a good pipe! Having said that they have taken the feedback on board and in the sizing spreadsheet you can see the amount of bandwidth that a typical agent may use. I went through the new beta of the System Center Capacity Planner for MOM and put in the lowest bandwidth and did a simulation on monitoring servers over slow links and SCCP provided an estimate of how much bandwidth would be taken. So it is possible to see how much bandwidth can be potentially used. And in most cases it is not that much.

 

In order to reduce bandwidth there a few things you can do. Obviously don’t push out agents during working hours but in the evening and weekend instead. The same goes for updating management packs. You can also use a distribution tool like SMS to deploy the agent MSI file as these tools have more control but you can not deploy management packs like that. As far as MOM is concerned this is a manual deployment of the agent and so the global setting needs to be unchecked to allow that.

 

Once running you can increase the value of the heartbeat times. The agent heartbeat is a lightweight “ping” and I would recommend leaving that if possible as you want to know if your servers are up. The management pack heartbeat is 5 minutes by default and that can be increased as you should be releasing management packs in a controlled manner at specific times.

 

The other traffic is alerts. Which is what you want, as that is why you have installed MOM. But you can look at alerts that come in and disable rules that create informational or success alerts to reduce traffic. A good tool to help in analysing a management pack before you deploy it is Silect’s MP Express Studio. The other traffic is caused by collecting performance counters. Again it is a case of which counters do you really need and that will depend on the scope of the project when you first evaluated MOM. Some counters you can stop and others you can increase the time between samples so it is every hour instead of every 5 mins and so on. The best way to do this is to copy the original rule to a new rule directory and disable the original. That gives it a new GUID so it does not get overwritten by an updated management pack. If you disable some counters than some of the reports will not have the data.

 

If you have a mix of servers in a data centre and servers across slow WAN links then you may want to consider having 2 management groups (it will depend on the number of servers you are managing). One management group can be set up with all the management packs and default settings and the other can be configured just to do servers over WAN links so that the settings can be tuned. Then link the management groups with the MCF. This will depend on how precious your bandwidth is as there will be an administrative overhead in doing this. Alternatively have one management group with 2 MOM servers with Global Settings switch off so you can tune each server individually. You can also ensure that the correct servers report to the correct MOM server by using manualmc.txt. This text file is read by the MOM server and contains a list of server names that it will use.

 

Or you can just do what the Americans do and buy more bandwidth. J It is getting cheaper. I wonder if there will be a day when bandwidth stops being an issue or will the requirements of the software continually expand to fill the existing bandwidth in the same way that nature abhors a vacuum.

I am not at IT Forum this year. A shame as the last three years it has been in Copenhagen (and cold) and this year it is in Barcelona.

 

I was reading the press release based on today’s keynotes and there are some interesting things going on.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/nov05/11-15ITForum05UmbrellaPR.mspx

 

On the management front System Center Capacity Planner 2006, mentioned in a previous blog, will RTM in December. See previous blog for explanation of RTM.

 

One of the areas that caught my eye was the push towards 64 bit. OK It is hard to buy a server these days that is not 64 bit but it looks like a few products will be 64 bit only.

 

After announcing the new virtual licensing for Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition R2 (http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/8/9/68964284-864d-4a6d-aed9-f2c1f8f23e14/virtualization_brief.doc - means that you can have 4 virtual servers running at no extra cost), now they have announced the new R2 for Virtual Server 2005 and the Standard product (1 to 4 CPUs) will be $99 and the Enterprise Edition will be $199. That is aggressive pricing – and that is before discounts for volume licensing.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/howtobuy/default.mspx

This should make it cheaper to set up a virtual test lab.

 

The other management announcement was System Center Essentials.

 

“Microsoft also detailed plans for a mid-market offering called System Center Essentials. The new product will bring the commitment of the Dynamic Systems Initiative to midsize companies, allowing them to easily and cost-effectively secure, update, monitor and track their IT environment and better support end users.”

 

Microsoft defines mid-market as 25 to 500 PCs.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/midsizebusiness/default.mspx

 

I expect more info to come out now that it has been announced but don’t expect a new product – just a bundling of existing products like MOM WE and WSUS.

One of the nice things about the Exchange team is that they keep the Exchange MP up to date. SP2 for Exchange 2003 was released and so an updated MP has been released. The MP has been mentioned by Stefan (http://spaces.msn.com/members/sstranger/Blog/cns!1pFlliC2i40P7K7DyagVO1KQ!212.entry) and Nick MacKechnie (http://blogs.msdn.com/nickmac/archive/2005/11/04/488873.aspx).

 

My beef is not with the Exchange MP which is one of the best MP’s for MOM but some little things around it that bug me.

 

In order to really use the Exchange MP you need the Exchange MP Configuration Wizard. Again Stephan has done the blog (http://spaces.msn.com/members/sstranger/Blog/cns!1pFlliC2i40P7K7DyagVO1KQ!213.entry).

 

The Wizard does not show up in the management pack catalogue apart from a link included in the description field of the Exchange MP. It is not included as part of the Exchange MP download. If you look at the download site and filter by MOM and date (a trick I mentioned in an earlier blog) it does not show up. You have to filter the download area for Exchange. Would it be so hard to include it in the MOM area and the management pack catalogue?

 

You really need the Configuration Wizard if you are doing any serious Exchange monitoring. In fact the MP will throw up errors as some rules are expecting you to have run it. One option may be to have the Exchange MP split into two. The base MP that would run and do the normal checks and a second MP to be installed only when you run the Config wizard. Just a thought. The product group has split the Exchange 2000 and 2003 AKMs out when you expand this download.

 

As for the download, it is an EXE file, which I thought was a bit strange as recent downloads have been MSI. But when you run it, it creates a folder with a single MSI in it! What is the point of that? Also the catalogue states the date as 11/02/05 but on the download page it says 11/10/05. Does not change anything but the inconsistent information is worrying.

 

The version number of the MP is 06.5.7719 and the Configuration Wizard as 06.5.7720. The catalogue used to have the version number as part of the description. I have now taken to saving the new MPs in a folder based on the MP name, date of release and version number. I can glance at the folder and see whether everything is up to date.

 

My last moan is on the lack of information. The download page does not give any clues on what has been changed in this MP and there is little documentation included that gives that info. The last bit of the document, once you have run the MSI file, gives this info:-

 

The following list of rules highlights some of the changes that were added in this update to the Exchange Server 2003 Management Pack for MOM 2005. Some of the rules added in this release of Exchange Server Management Pack relate to features added in Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2). For information about Exchange Server 2003 SP2 features, see What's New in Exchange Server 2003.

 

Note   Exchange 2000 Server Management Pack has not been updated

 

Rules have been added to provide enhanced monitoring in the following areas:

•     Exchange database sizes limits

•     Exchange ActiveSync configuration settings

•     Exchange ActiveSync Up-to-Date Notifications performance

•     Exchange ActiveSync errors

•     Monitor intelligent message filtering performance

•     Intelligent message filtering for errors.

•     Sender ID configuration errors

•     Sender ID errors

•     Disk read/write performance

•     DSAccess settings

•     Public folder replication

 

Some? That is a bit vague. It would be nice to know what has been changed before applying this updated MP. It would be nice to have this on the download page before you even download it.

 

To quote from the Change Management section of Microsoft Operation Framework (MOF):-

 

A need for change, whether it is an improvement to or phasing out of an existing service or the creation of a new one, drives the change management process. Within a controlled change management process, these needs all prompt the creation of a request for change (RFC). The RFC is a standard document in which all relevant information about the proposed change is recorded, ranging from basic facts about the change (for example, change to a field name on a data base system) to more detailed information, such as the wider-reaching effects of the change (for example, the systems that interact with or report on the changed field name).

The RFC must answer the what, why, who, when, where, and how questions of the proposed change. It must describe the change, the effort it will take to implement the change and by whom, the method of implementation, and the configuration items involved.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/cits/mo/smf/smfchgmg.mspx

 

None of these are serious – just annoying. On a more positive note.

 

The Exchange MP is good but needs some work configuring it. I would highly recommend reading the Exchange MP Guide which is very good as it explains what you need to do. The guide can be found with others and some good papers at

http://www.microsoft.com/mom/techinfo/productdoc/default.mspx

 

But for further information there is a really useful 3 part tutorial on the Exchange management pack written by Neil Hobson at Silversands, a UK Microsoft partner.

 

Part 1 starts at:

http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Managing-Exchange-2003-MOM-2005-Part1.html

Recently I was asked about a management pack for Sybari Antigen. As Microsoft had bought Sybari and I knew they had been working on a pack I assumed that it would be on the catalogue but it wasn’t. Perhaps it will be added soon? Or maybe it has not passed the testing yet.

 

I found it here on the Sybari site.

http://www.sybari.com/portal/alias__Rainbow/lang__en-US/tabID__70003627/DesktopDefault.aspx

 

While looking around I found this MOM blog mentioning it as well. http://blogs.msdn.com/fabricem/archive/2005/09/13/465015.aspx

 

A little bit of French but mainly English. Have a look at Fabrice Meillon's blog for more management stuff.

http://blogs.msdn.com/fabricem/default.aspx

 

Well it looks like the MOM team have done a clean up of the catalogue. John Hann mentioned it was going to be done on his blog. Before you would see some products called Windows X 2003 and another entry for X 2005. They have now named all the products consistently so they all appear together. And a good thing it is too.

 

On the “Applies To” column, apart from SMS there are three options - MOM 2000, MOM 2005 or MOM 2005/2000.

 

Anything that is marked as MOM 2005 means that it only applies to MOM 2005 and can not be used for MOM 2000.

 

If it is marked as MOM 2000 then that means that not only is it for MOM 2000 but there is a management pack for MOM 2005 available for this product. MOM 2000 packs can be imported into MOM 2005.

 

If it is marked as MOM 2005/2000 then this means that it is a MOM 2000 pack and there is not an updated pack for MOM 2005 so it can be used on either. On MOM 2005 these management packs will not take advantage of overrides and the State View and any reporting will not work as MOM 2000 used an Access front end to the SQL database whereas MOM 2005 uses SQL Reporting Services and queries the data warehouse rather than the MOM operation database (still called one point).

 

It is possible to get MOM 2000 MPs to create a State View. Start with the MP Wizard and create a new MP for that product that monitors services etc and when it is imported it will apply the new column to the State View. You can go through the MOM 2000 MP that is imported into MOM 2005 and pick rules that will change the State View. You need to know what will make it red (usually the rule you are looking it) and more importantly, what will make it go back to green so that the view is updated automatically. It takes a bit of time but it is worth it for the major areas that you are interested in.

 

Eileen Brown (how does she have the time to do so many bloggs?) has blogged about the System Center Capacity Planner which was picked up by Stefan Stranger (some good MOM articles on his blog). This is a beta release that you can download and play with. It was originally going to be called Capacity Manager (System Center is the new Microsoft brand for all things management). When it is released it should be available as part of the Technet subscription from what I have been told.

 

The reason for the change is that Capacity Manager is going to be the tool that will enable data to be drawn from the System Center data warehouse and start to analyse what is going on based on real data. This version is more of sizing spreadsheet on steroids. The feedback we gave to the Product Group is that it should be a different name especially as this version will be practically free whereas Capacity Manager will be charged for. A number of us customer facing people told the product group that giving v1 for free and then charging for v2 will cause problems. Hence the name change.

 

People mainly talk about it for the Exchange modelling and planning (which is actually very impressive) but all MOM people out there should have a look at it to help model a MOM 2005 system.

 

I went through and modelled a MOM system with a number of servers at a head office and 50 branch offices each with a DC. As always the US assume everyone has great big pipes. There are a few server configurations that you can chose but there is the ability to create your own server configuration. I found going through quickly and creating a model the easiest and going back later to edit usage profiles etc. I am sure with a bit more practice I will find the best way to use it. I think it may get very confusing to edit it afterwards if you have many sites though. It make take a few iterations of going through the tool to get it right.

 

What I found nice is the way it displays the information (looks like it is using the new MMC v3 design) and when you run the simulation it shows you if there are any bottlenecks. I especially liked the WAN usage figure which everyone always asks about with MOM. And you can play with the types of management packs and the amount of alerts to see how that affects the system.

 

The Performance and Sizing white paper gives a background on how MOM was tested to get the supportability numbers and the Sizing spreadsheet is a good starting point for designing a MOM system. It is a rule of thumb and should not be taken as gospel as my good friend Gordon McKenna says. This tool makes it much easier for people to look at the impact of MOM and the topology although it does not help you to come up with a “best” design from what I have seen so far. So people will still need knowledge and experience to design a MOM system. It should, however, help highlight bottlenecks and so should be part of the toolkit for every MOM consultant.

 

The Beta is available for download at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B68C06A5-8949-4A3F-9685-21228DBE8A0E&displaylang=en

 

Customers/Partners can provide feedback at: http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=128

 

System Center Capacity Planner 2006 web site. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/systemcenter/evaluation/capacity/default.mspx

 

By the way it requires the .Net v2 beta to be installed.

 

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7ABD8C8F-287E-4C7E-9A4A-A4ECFF40FC8E&displaylang=en

 

And if you have the original .Net v2 beta (as I had) you have to uninstall it before the beta v2 will install.

I have had a chance to watch the Technet webcast on the AviCode MP (today) and I had a web meeting with Silect on their MP Express Studio. I was impressed by both offerings.

 

The AviCode comes in two flavours and the basic one is free (see management catalogue) but the Enterprise version is charged for. Although it was referred to as basic it still is very impressive. It allows you to monitor .Net applications and .Net services and have alerts come into MOM to discover operation and performance issues. This is all without the developers having to write any management code into their app – which makes it even more impressive and useful.

 

The Enterprise version takes it a step further and allows drill down into the components that caused the error or slow performance and links into Visual Team Studio so the developers can see the sections and even the line of code that caused the problem and automatically create a bug entry to track it.

 

I would recommend going to the events site and watching that webcast for the demo. They usually publish them a few days after the live session. It is event ID 1032282312. Also on the AviCode web site they have some information and demos by the looks of things that I will have a look at.

 

MP Studio Express from Silect is all about help you to manage and tune MPs. You can load up MPs and see what type of alerts the rules in an MP will produce. So you can show all the Critical and above alerts that could be generated and what rule those would be. All very drag and drop and a bit like an Excel pivot table.

 

I also liked the ability to get an MP to be set to look at a server and you set a time and a frequency and it returns back a table of performance figures and events that the MP could have generated. The performance figures give you minimum, maximum and average. So it looks like a neat way to baseline a system and setting thresholds before deploying the MP.

 

I was impressed also by its ability to analyse changes that had been made to an MP and who had made those changes and when. It also has a powerful function to analyse changes between versions of MPs over and above those provided by the resource kit tools (export to XML and then MPDiff).

 

I have been given a trail version to look at so I will be installing it on my VPC to see what it turns up on my system.

 

If you are responsible for monitoring .Net applications look at the AviCode MP – it is neat. If you are the MOM administrator I think you will find MP Studio Express a powerful help in managing MPs.

It has been a bit busy recently so it is nice to have time to do some updates. We had a number of the Product Group coming to the UK for a Best of MMS event including Kirill Tatarinov (Corporate VP of the Windows and Enterprise Management Division- the head man who is responsible for management technologies at Microsoft). It was a great event with our biggest presentation room at our office filled. A large chunk of the audience stayed for over an hour to ask questions – and this was on a Friday! There is definitely a thirst for more knowledge on Microsoft management technologies.

 

All the speakers were great with Kirill doing a keynote and roadmap. Followed by Bill Anderson from the SMS team and then Vlad Joanovic did a session on MOM (he stole a slide that I had created for a specific customer presentation and my MP Wizard demo that I had written a HOL for but it was nice to see someone else using them). Michael Emmanuel did a great job of not only presenting DSI but making it amusing as well. He is from the UK so his dry English humour went down well.

 

And as Alfred promised they all got the MMS DVD with all the sessions from Las Vegas in April. If you are thinking of going the 2006 MMS is in San Diego which I think is a great city.

 

We were fortunate to have Kirill do an internal session the afternoon before the event. It has been satisfying to see the Microsoft management strategy firm up and have clear direction since Kirill took over. He told us a number of plans and answered some questions. Unfortunately I can not share those as they were internal only but look out for announcements at IT Forum (Nov in Barcelona) and the MMS. It is going to get interesting in the Microsoft management space.

It is strange that customers still ask about monitoring hardware with MOM. The Insight Management pack for Compaq and HP servers has been around for almost as long as Microsoft has had MOM. Dell had one for OpenManage and has created a 2005 one as well. IFujitsu Siemens have done one as well and BM is creating one for Director which is due out later this year but there is a community MP available.

 

The nice thing about this is that all the alerts come into MOM. Talking with Gordon McKenna , MOM MVP who has done a lot of MOM installs at customer sites, it seems that HP Insight Manager, for example, is in use but people rarely looked at the console. So it is great that all alerts go into MOM.

 

Management pack catalogue at

http://www.microsoft.com/management/mma/catalog.aspx

 

Link to IBM community pack at MyITForum

MOM IBM Director Management Pack

 

You can also use WMI to query the hardware using WMI Query Language (WQL) which is very similar to SQL. Just to show what can be done we created a demo that used WMI to monitor the sound volume. When you put the volume up above a certain level MOM returned it back down again. When it went too load MOM reduced the volume and shut down Media Player. Great demo to show using WMI to monitor hardware and also to demonstrate MOM’s ability to respond with automatic actions. Not an enterprise demo but it people always remembered it.

 

MOM 2000 had the ability to do an HTTP ping out of the box whereas MOM 2005 did not. You could script something similar but we were told that the reason it was not there was there would be a new management pack that would be coming out – the Web Sites and Services Management Pack.

 

When it was first released to the web I had a quick look and was impressed by my initial look but did not dive in. Last week I was meeting a customer who was looking to monitor their Internet and intranet web sites and so I dug a little deeper.

 

My conclusion. This is not a MOM management pack but an application that happens to use the MOM infrastructure and consoles. And looking at what this application can do I can see that many organisations would pay thousands (pounds, dollars or Euros) for that type of application on its own but Microsoft gives it as part of the MOM license which is good value anyway.

 

You can also tell it is a bit of a v1 product when you read the installation instructions. And you should read them. This is not a management pack that you just import into MOM but is an application that can have some bits on the management server, some on the agent and some on the console. It is very strange as well as when you download the MP it is an MSI package and running will expand it and place some files in the MP directory. You then have to go to this directory and run another MSI which actually does the real installation – but read the instructions first. If this is on a test server with all the components on a single server you can install all and not worry too much. You still have to manually import some reports through the standard wizard though.

 

You can tell it is an application as there are not many rules out of the box but a front end tool to create your own. You start this to create a new rule (or what they call a request sequence) and follow the wizard. This brings up IE and you can point at web sites (regardless of whether they are Windows, Linux or UNIX – which is great plus for organisations with heterogeneous systems) and point and click through the site until you are finished. The tool captures these as a sequence of requests which you can then edit. If you know what you are doing you can add your own in by hand. You save this sequence and MOM creates a rule that will automatically run this sequence for you and tell you of issues with the site or even bits of the web page not coming up or taking too long to come up.

 

Once you have that sequence you can fire up the tool to edit the sequence. Just take a look at the tabs and all the options you have available. It is very configurable.

 

As the MOM server or a MOM agent can be configured to fire these requests against web servers you can have a single MOM server doing checks against multiple sites and web servers. So you can create a powerful monitoring solution for just the cost of a single MOM server.

 

If you have MOM and not looked at this pack then you should do so if you need to monitor web sites rather than just IIS and the OS. If you need to monitor web sites and don’t have MOM then this is a good time to evaluate it.

I read a really good article from Martin Butler in IT Week.

http://www.itweek.co.uk/itweek/comment/2141759/buyers-focus-function

 

He was talking about a company who could not sell their solution as it did not use middle ware but all the competition did. So it was shunned as it was different from the rest. He was concerned that IT professionals couldn't evaluate technology on its merit but just went with the flow and took the low risk option. The full article is worth a read.

 

I felt that MOM was in a similar position in the management market as Microsoft does it differently from the Big 4. The Systems Management teams in organisations have been so used to the Tivoli, CA Unicenter, BMC Patrol or HPOV way of doing things that they dismiss MOM. “It is not heterogeneous”. “It does not do xxxx (add one of the many objections that the Big 4 say they do but getting it to work is another matter)”. Or my favourite – “It is from Microsoft – what do they know about management?”. Having said that, a large number do use it as a “tactical” solution to monitor Exchange and AD or as an elemental manager managing Windows and feeding into one of those frameworks. And I am seeing more customers and partners looking to use MOM as the main solution and use add-ons from Jalasoft, eXc Software and others to do the heterogeneous aspect. And I expect that to accelerate when MOM v3 ships with its focus on service management.

 

Organisations have different hardware, operating systems and applications from multiple vendors. But they think the solution to that is one management system. If one OS and application is not good enough for the business then how can one management system be good enough? I am not advocating a system where someone has 26 “best of breed” tools but a mix of tools may be the best – as long as they interoperate. MOM is built for that with the MOM Connector Framework (MCF) which is a web service. You can download resource kit add-ons that link MOM into TEC and HPOV (bidirectional) and we also provide a solution accelerator to show how to link MOM into a helpdesk system using the MCF. On top of that Skywire, Engyro and eXc Software all provide connectors to a number of different systems. You can not say that MOM will not fit in. One of our consultants even showed how you could turn the XML from the MCF and use it as an RSS feed so you could get MOM alerts in your RSS Reader. How cool is that?

How do you know if you have the right management packs and they are up to date and find out about new ones?

 

Microsoft and partners creating MOM Management Packs will regularly update them and put them on the web. Many of these updates can be found from the Management Pack and Product Connector Catalog web page and you can sort the column by date.

http://www.microsoft.com/management/mma/catalog.aspx

 

I prefer to use Microsoft Downloads filtered by Operation Manager and sorted by date

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/results.aspx?productId=9CD2C70F-F1DE-4C4D-8ECB-1432951CE0C6&CategoryID=&freetext=&DisplayLang=en&DisplayEnglishAlso=&sortCriteria=date&startDate=&period=0&type=&nr=20

 

As well as MPs it gives you the latest white papers that have been released as well. Also you can see the new MPs in the Download area before it shows up in the catalog.

 

Microsoft also provides the Microsoft Management Pack Notifier MP.

 

The Microsoft Management Pack Notifier Management Pack enables the generation of Informational alerts as updated management pack are released.

 

Once installed this Management Pack will periodically contact Microsoft to determine if updates to previously installed management packs are available for download. When an update is detected an Informational alert will be generated indicating which management pack(s) and version(s) are available.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a24cea3a-1920-4b18-8cf2-8bf78c94c917&DisplayLang=en