Microsoft Operations Manager - Updates & News, February 2005
Best General Network Monitoring Tool – MOM
January 2005
Lafe Low, Redmond Magazine
Redmond Magazine announced its reader's choice awards and MOM is named best general network monitoring tool.
MOM 2005 Takes Home the Silver
TechTarget recently awarded MOM 2005 with a silver medal as Product of the Year in the Network and System Management category.
Released: Live Communications Server 2005 Management Pack
The Live Communications Server 2005 Management Pack for MOM 2005 monitors the health of computers running Live Communications Server 2005 on Windows Server 2003 and alerts IT administrators about critical health conditions that indicate degraded performance.
Released: Microsoft Password Change Notification Service Management Pack
Microsoft Password Change Notification Service Management Pack provides a monitoring system for the Microsoft Password Change Notification Service. PCNSMP collects events placed into the event log by PCNS. Key events are highlighted to indicate possible service outages, configuration problems, and degraded performance so that corrective or preventative actions can be taken in a timely manner.
Released: Microsoft Identity Integration Server 2003 Management Pack
Microsoft Identity Integration Server (MIIS) 2003 enables the integration and management of identity information across multiple repositories, systems, and platforms. MIIS 2003 augments Active Directory directory service by providing broad interoperability capabilities including: integration with a wide range of identity repositories, provisioning and synchronizing identity information across multiple stores, and brokering changes to identity information by automatically detecting updates and sharing the changes across systems. This management pack monitors identity integration scenarios for MIIS 2003.
Released: Microsoft Windows Terminal Server Management Pack
Microsoft Windows Terminal Server (TS) Management Pack, version 2 monitors the TS services application event log. This management pack includes event rules for the TSservice, Licensing Service and Session Directory service in NT4 TS Edition, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003. The events collected from each service indicate critical issues with TS operations during deployment. The improvements above apply to Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 sections of the MP. NT4 TS Edition section is unchanged from previous version.
Available: Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Performance and Sizing White Paper
An accurate analysis of the performance and sizing of the hardware systems that support Microsoft® Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 is critical to the successful implementation of MOM 2005. This technical paper shares some of the knowledge gained from the performance and sizing testing for MOM 2005, and is presented in various scenarios.
The test results presented in this paper do not represent nor are they meant to define an absolute system configuration for any number of managed computers. Rather, use the findings in this paper and the MOM 2005 Management Sizer as a starting point to help you to determine the appropriate performance and sizing considerations for MOM 2005 in your specific environment.
Available: Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Deployment Planning Guide
This guide provides you with a roadmap for developing a deployment plan for your Microsoft® Operations Manager 2005 (MOM) monitoring solution. In addition, this guide directs you to the relevant conceptual, security, and planning resources you might need to help you develop a sound deployment strategy.
Available: Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Operations Guide
The Microsoft® Operations Manager 2005 Operations Guide includes guidance and recommended best practices for backing up and restoring, maintaining, optimizing and monitoring Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 (MOM) in an existing IT infrastructure. This guidance is based on the supported MOM deployment architectures described in the Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Supported Configurations Guide. Additional instructions are provided for managing agents across multiple domains, across firewalls, across slow links, and in workgroups. Detailed instructions are provided for each of the MOM components: the MOM Database, the Management Server, agents, consoles and the MOM Reporting Database. Detailed information about MOM security-related features and processes are provided in the Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Security Guide.
General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems Case Study
General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems (GDAIS), a General Dynamics business unit that serves customers in the defense and intelligence communities, needed to proactively monitor and manage its servers. GDAIS used monitoring tools that notified IT staff about issues only after services had failed. This hindered the productivity of both business users and IT administrators. In addition, the IT staff manually created reports to document and analyze server trends. The company deployed Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 to manage key parts of its network—Microsoft Exchange Server version 5.5 and the Active Directory service. With the new solution, GDAIS expects to reduce downtime through proactive monitoring and alerting, increase IT staff productivity with an easy-to-use operator console, and validate service uptime by using predefined reports.
Technology Firm Simplifies IT Operations to Improve Efficiency and Increase Uptime
The Microsoft Solutions for Infrastructure and Management (MSIM) team has released a case study describing Avanade's use of the Alert Tuning Solution Accelerator to fine-tune the alerts that Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 generates. Avanade, a global technology consulting company that helps enterprise customers optimize their IT investments, has more than 2,700 employees in 30 locations. The company needed to adjust the alerts that MOM generates to meet its specific needs. To do so, it used the Alert Tuning Solution Accelerator, which includes a guide—Automatic Trouble Ticket Generation Using MOM 2005—that describes the steps involved in preparing for and implementing autoticketing. The Avanade case study describes the business challenge that Avanade faced, the solution it chose, and the benefits it achieved by using the Alert Tuning Solution Accelerator.
MOM Knows Best
January 14, 2005
Jon Honeyball, PC Pro Magazine
“In case you are one of those people who likes to hop to the end of the column to see if it is a thumbs up or down, I will put you out of your misery right now: MOM 2005 is now an essential piece of software. If you run Windows servers, you should have MOM 2005 installed - there are no exceptions and no excuses.”
Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 - Got a Windows server problem? Just ask MOM
January 24, 2005
Barry Nance, Network World
If you want to stay ahead of server failures, server capacity problems and server-related network outages, Microsoft Operation Manager 2005 can help. On a small to midsize network with Windows 2000 Server systems and above, MOM 2005 can do a good job of getting and reporting server status and health information.
