Rob Stevens's WebLog

Ops Manager Case Study by CMS Consulting Canada

Rob Stevens — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 22:28:00 GMT

As the momentum builds around the official RTM of Ops Manager (announced today at MMS 2007 and now ). The case studys and info is starting to hit the streets.

Check out this Case study on how CMS used Ops Manager 2007 and the Secure Vantage MP for Sunnybrook hospital in Canada.

http://www.cms.ca/resource/CMS_Sunnybrook_SCOM_Case_Study_07.pdf

MMS Highlights CANADA 24th April - Register NOW!

Rob Stevens — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 16:07:00 GMT

MMS 2007 is just getting going but unfortunately not everyone may be able to attend. Therefore the Microsoft team in Canada are offering an MMS highlights event for a subset of the great info that will no doubt be delivered this week in San Diego.

If you want to come and hear about all the great new capabilities that System Center brings this year then register now for the Canadian MMS Highlights event here:

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032334392&culture=en-ca

Creating Ops Manager 2007 Management Packs

Rob Stevens — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 16:03:00 GMT

If you are looking for great new ways to build Ops Manager 2007 management packs, check this out:

http://www.authormps.com

Steve Wilson from the product team has out this site together to help you with undestanding and building new MP's. It includes info on:

Concepts
MP Schema
Module Types / Monitor Type library
Tutorials
Samples
Authoring principles
Application instrumentation guidance

MMS 2007 gets going

Rob Stevens — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 15:44:00 GMT

The Microsoft Management Summit 2007 is getting going this week (March 26-20) with some content already released to the web. Check ot some of the Microsoft executives talking about some of the great new steps being taken in Operations Management capabilities and more, here :

http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/about/summit.aspx

MOM 2005 Reskit updated

Rob Stevens — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 23:45:00 GMT

I dont know about you but I think that the RESKIT for MOM is pretty fantastic.......and now look its been updated :-)

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

SMS R2 - More cool stuff with SMS 2003

Rob Stevens — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 16:23:00 GMT

More reasons to look at SMS 2003, check out the R2 details.

Inventory Tool for Custom Updates

Scan Tool for Vulnerability Assessment

http://www.microsoft.com/smserver/evaluation/2003/r2.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2006/feb06/02-21SMS.mspx

Eileens got some more details here: http://blogs.technet.com/eileen_brown/archive/2006/02/21/r2_beta.aspx

MOM 2005 and ISV Solutions, MOM Connectors, MOM Agents, MOM Management Packs

Rob Stevens — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 11:19:00 GMT

Anyone that is working with MOM 2005 or is looking to deploy it in their own environment needs to be aware of all the great 3rd party additions that are now available.

Check out the Management Pack Catalogue for updates MP's and connectors etc HERE

A partner I know just installed some of the network management additions to MOM for his customer and now the customer can build views of his Application Servers, network infrastructure and get a full picture of what is going on. Even if you have a seperate networking team, bringing this kind of view to the owners of yor application services can be highly beneficial.

Enjoy :-)

MOM 2005 and ISV Solutions, MOM Connectors, MOM Agents, MOM Management Packs

Rob Stevens — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 11:12:00 GMT

Anyone that is working with MOM 2005 or is looking to deploy it in their own environment needs to be aware of all the great 3rd party additions that are now available.

Check out the Management Pack Catalogue for updates MP's and connectors etc HERE

Enjoy :-)

SMS - Security Update Scan Tool

Rob Stevens — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 22:44:00 GMT

SMS February 2005 Security Update Scan Tool – English – Released to the Web

This tool is a scan tool built for the sole purpose of helping customers determine SMS client computers that may need security updates provided with the February security bulletins that are not detectable using the existing SMS Security Update Inventory Tool built on MBSA. Like MBSA, this tool also has the instructions for SMS to locate each applicable update and download it from Microsoft. The SMS February 2005 Security Update Scan Tool is built on Enterprise Scan Tool (EST) detection technology.

For February, the bulletins are as follows:

· MS05-004

· MS05-006

· MS05-009

For more information about the exact detection capabilities of EST and how it differs from MBSA, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 894192. For more information on the SMS February 2005 Security Update Scan Tool, please see the included user guide and release notes.

The SMS February 2005 Security Update Scan Tool – English is available at the Microsoft Download Center at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2FCD82CF-9B6E-441F-BBC7-7DBAAF10279D&displaylang=en

MMS 2005 Session now LIVE!!! emmm Las Vegas :-)

Rob Stevens — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 19:01:00 GMT

http://www.mms2005.com/content/sessions.aspx

MOM 2005 Resource Kit

Rob Stevens — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 19:30:00 GMT

It still amazes me how many people don't know about the resource kit for MOM 2005 and it is such a great bunch of tools which really add value to any MOM administrator's role. The ability to create management packs quickly with the Management Pack Wizard, Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) Wizard, Management Pack Version Checker and lots more. Not to mention cool tools like the Ops Console Notifier.

If you want to take a look at the Reskit, go to: http://www.microsoft.com/mom/downloads/2005/reskit/default.mspx

MOM 2005 Resource Kit

Rob Stevens — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 18:40:00 GMT

If you want to take a look at the Reskit, go to: http://www.microsoft.com/mom/downloads/2005/reskit/default.mspx

SMS Alliance Event in London and Reading

Rob Stevens — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 19:36:00 GMT

End-to-End Systems Management Briefing
Free one-day event: How to maximize the capabilities and benefits of SMS

The SMS Alliance and Microsoft will present best-of-breed solutions to help IT professionals maximize their System Management Server investment. By demonstrating how to extend SMS to better manage complex and diverse environments, attendees will learn how to reduce operational costs while maximizing efficiencies across the enterprise.

Hosted by Microsoft, this exclusive event will showcase demonstrations of all SMS Alliance partner solutions by SMS-Alliance members including, 1E, iAnywhere, Macrovision, PS'Soft, and Vintela. Register today for briefings in London, 10th February or Reading, 8th February.

London:

https://msevents-eu.microsoft.com/cui/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-GB&eventid=118753698

Reading:

https://msevents-eu.microsoft.com/cui/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-GB&eventid=118753697

MOM 2005 in PC Pro Magazine

Rob Stevens — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 12:03:00 GMT

“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.”

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/realworld/68148/mom-knows-best.html

Need we say anymore !!!

MOM 2005 Management pack for Web Sites and Services

Rob Stevens — Tue, 25 Jan 2005 01:47:00 GMT

A great new Management Pack soon to be available.

The Web Sites and Services MP can be used to monitor availability and performance of Web Sites and Web Services by performing HTTP requests against the monitored entities.

On top of UI features that make it a snap to create Request Sequences for monitoring Web applications and Web Services and on top of core monitoring functionality, Microsoft have added a Web page content monitoring feature. When monitoring a URL that represents a Web page, this feature can parse the Web page content, extract and monitor all content resources (images, scripts, style sheets, etc).

You will find this feature very useful when you care about monitoring resources used by a Web page that change frequently. You could monitor the Web page content by explicitly adding the URLs that point to the resources, but that would require keeping the monitor in sync with the Web page as the resources it uses change.

You will also find this feature useful as a link checker because it can automatically extract and monitor all links on a Web page.

Watch this space for news on the RTW of this great MP