Will Kaiser left a message that he was looking for authoring resources. He said:

I've designed and implemented 3 different OpsMgr environments and will soon be starting my 4th.  I'm looking to dig further into custom authoring via the authoring tab in the console, and have found very little information aside from a few very basic log files and vbscript examples.  Do you cover this in your book?  Do you know any other good resources that are out there?

(This was after he told us he's been following our blog since October and it has proven to be invaluable. Comments like that make the work of maintaining a blog worthwhile!)

Regarding the "authoring tab", Microsoft is developing an Authoring console, which we do discuss in our forthcoming book. The Authoring console is currently at release candidate status, and it will require OpsMgr 2007 Service Pack 1. Whether or not the two will be released concurrently is a question for Microsoft, but the console certainly won't be available before then.

Even with the Authoring console, some things will still need to be done with XML, but the new console reduces those considerably. We document these in the book in Chapter 23.

Meanwhile, you can download the RC version from Microsoft's connect website, if you want to start working with it.  See http://ops-mgr.spaces.live.com/default.aspx?_c01_BlogPart=blogentry&_c=BlogPart&handle=cns!3D3B8489FCAA9B51!288 for information on getting the console. The Authoring console has come a LONG way from its early beta versions!

A friend of ours, Walter Chomak, was chatting the other day about OpsMgr I/O and that he had just finished working on his performance model (not sure you ever really "finish" these things, though). The cornerstone of the model is that regardless of the number of agents, the I/O is a 85/15 split. With 85% reads, if your average disk sec/read is greater than 50-75ms, you will observe latency in the console. This will hold true for 100 agents or 6000 agents (of course, as agents increase [load], keeping those times down requires better disk subsystems.)

Walter modeled this in many sizes of environments, ranging from 500 to over 7000 agents. He has published an article on his blog, OpsMgr 2007 I/O Considerations, that you will definitely want to read. Check out http://wchomak.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!F56EFE25599555EC!610.entry.

Kerrie Meyler was just awarded Microsoft MVP status in MOM. It goes without saying that Kerrie is very excited and humbled! (Now she will try to come down to earth long enough to finish copy-edit review for System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed.)

Kerrie would like to extend a huge Thank You to everyone who has supported her in this effort!