OpsMgr Functionality

OpsMgr provides for several major pieces of functionality as follows:

• Management packs—Application-specific monitoring rules are provided within individual files called management packs. For example, Microsoft provides management packs for Windows server systems, Exchange Server, SQL Server, SharePoint, DNS, and DHCP, along with many other Microsoft technologies including Lync Server 2010. Management packs are loaded with the intelligence and information necessary to properly troubleshoot and identify problems. The rules are dynamically applied to agents based on a custom discovery process provided within the management pack. Only applicable rules are applied to each managed server.

• Event monitoring rules—Management pack rules can monitor for specific event log data. This is one of the key methods of responding to conditions within the environment.

• Performance monitoring rules—Management pack rules can monitor for specific performance counters. This data is used for alerting based on thresholds or archived for trending and capacity planning. The performance graph in Figure 13.1 shows IM Performance Latency data for the LS1 Server. There was a brief spike in latency at approximately 6:15 a.m., but the latency is normally under less than 0.05ms.

Figure 13.1 Operations Manager 2007 R2 Performance Charts

• State-based monitors—Management packs contain monitors, which allow for advanced state-based monitoring and aggregated health rollup of services. Monitors also provide self-tuning performance threshold monitoring based on a two- or three-state configuration. Figure 13.2 shows the health explorer for the LS1 Server. The Lync Server Application Sharing service is stopped.

Figure 13.2 Health Explorer

• Alerting—OpsMgr provides advanced alerting functionality by enabling email alerts, paging, short message service (SMS), instant messaging (IM), and functional alerting roles to be defined. Alerts are highly customizable, with the capability to define alert rules for all monitored components.

• Reporting—Monitoring rules can be configured to send monitored data to both the operations database for alerting and the reporting database for archiving.

• End-to-end service monitoring—OpsMgr provides service-oriented monitoring based on System Definition Model (SDM) technologies. This includes advanced object discovery and hierarchical monitoring of systems.