Operations Manager: abril de 2007

25/04/2007

Operations Manager 2007 - what's in a name?

Just in case you hadn't noticed, the name of Microsoft's most recent version of operations mangement software has changed: to System Center Operations Manager (2007). Versions 2000 and 2005 were known as Microsoft Operations Manager, or MOM. Version 2007 has a System Center branding.

The reason behind the branding is to visibly align Operations Manager with the System Center umbrella of products. This is not to say you have to always call it System Center Operations Manager - that's a lot to say. Think of the Excel product, which is part of the Microsoft Office umbrella. Excel typically is not called Microsoft Office Excel 2007; it is just Excel, or perhaps Excel 2007.

So feel free to call the newest version of operations management software Operations Manager, or OpsMgr for short. What Microsoft does not want you to call it are other acronyms such as MOM 2007, SCOM (we didn't say that!) or OM (we didn't say that either!).

Of course, the name changing is just the tip of the iceberg. Operations Manager's focus in monitoring has also changed - from monitoring events in indivdual servers to monitoring all aspects of an application's health. OpsMgr 2007 also uses model-based management, where an IT environment is used as a model. Models are defined and represented in XML. If this doesn't sound like your mom's Operations Manager (yes that is supposed to be a pun!), you're right - Operations Manager 2007 is vastly different from its predecessors. So if you're a MOM 2005 administrator starting to learn about OpsMgr, don't let the technical knowledge you accumulated about MOM get in the way of your understanding Operations Manager 2007! Try to be a sponge and just soak it all in.

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14/04/2007

Staying current on OpsMgr 2007 with Technology

With the sheer variety of sources available providing information on OpsMgr 2007, it becomes difficult to keep current with this product, as it continually evolves. Trying to keep up with the number of sources for information on this has become very complex! After working on this for a week or so, the approach outlined below has helped incredibly in keeping up with what's going on out there.

The goal: to develop a single searchable solution that provides all information we have already compiled on OpsMgr as well as the best of the Internet-based resources that were available.

Tackling RSS

First, let's focus on the RSS aspect of the equation. There are a huge number of blogs out there which may have information on OpsMgr. To trim this list down, we only chose blog sites which currently have items relevate to OpsMgr / MOM that have been posted since the beginning of the current year. The list is also limited to sites using Englsh as the default language (the RSS reader we are using doesn't currently translate entries). The results: Our favorite top 20 or so OpsMgr / MOM blogs to watch (ordered alphabetically; the contents of the OPML file which can be imported directly into Outlook 2007 and is at the end of this blog entry):

Andrzej: http://blogs.technet.com/alipka/rss.xmll

Andy Dominey: http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/adominey/rss.aspx

Cameron Fuller: http://cameronfuller.spaces.live.com/feed.rss

Eileen Brown's Weblog: http://blogs.technet.com/eileen_brown/rss.aspx?CategoryID=7898

Ian Blyth: http://ianblythmanagement.wordpress.com/feed

John Hann: http://msmvps.com/blogs/jfhann.rss.aspx

Justin Harter: http://jharter.spaces.live.com/feed.rss

Kerrie Meyler on Network World: http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/3630/feed

Management Updates / Microsoft Operations Manager: http://blogs.msdn.com/managementupdates.rss.aspx?CategoryID=5153

Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) Web Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/cliveeastwood/rss.xml

My ITForum: http://www.myitforum.com/rssfeed/

Most Recent KBs for System Center Operations Manager 2007 http://support.microsoft.com/common/rss.aspx?rssid=12584&ln=en-us&msid=fa8026752634c744bb02673f094222ce

Mother: http://blogs.msdn.com/incarnato/rss.xml%20

Operations Manager Product Team Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/rss.xml

Operations Manager: http://ops-mgr.spaces.live.com/feed.rss

Rob Steven: http://blogs.msdn.com/rob_stevens/rss.xml

Rory McCaw: http://rorymccaw.spaces.live.com/feed.rss

Stefan Stranger: http://feeds.feedburner.com/myiti

System Center Forum: http://systemcenterforum.org/cagegory/news.feed/

System Center Operations Manager Command Shell: http://blogs.msdn/com/scshell/

Techlog: http://feeds.feedburner.com/techlog

Walter Chomak: http://wchomak.spaces.live.com/feed.rss

Tackling Newsgroups

To gather the newsgroup information within Outlook 2007, we purchaed NewsGator (www.newsgator.com) and configured it for the OpsMgr newsgroups. The following items are the OpsMgr-related newsgroups (the content of the OPML file, which can be imported directly into Outlook 2007 is at the end of this blog entry):

Microsoft.public.opsmgr.acs

Microsoft.public.opsmgr.ad

Microsoft.public.opsmgr.aem

Microsoft.public.opsmgr.authoring

Microsoft.public.opsmgr.docs

Microsoft.public.opsmgr.exchange

Microsoft.public.opsmgr/general

Microsoft.public.opsmgr.iis

Microsoft.public.opsmgr.managementpacks

Microsoft.public.opsmgr.powershell

Microsoft.public.opsmgr.reporting

Microsoft.public.opsmgr/sdk

Microsoft.public.opsmgr.setup

Microsoft.public.opsmgr.sql

Microsoft.public.opsmgr.ui

Websites

Still haven't found an effective way to monitor these other than to visit them regularly. Those that have RSS feeds are excluded from this list as they are covered above.

Management Pack Authoring: http://www.authormps.com

Microsoft OpsMgr Site: http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/opsmgr/default.mspx

Microsoft Webcasts on OpsMgr: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/opsmgr/2007/evaluate/webcasts.mspx

Microsoft TechCenter: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/opsmgr/default.mspx

MOMCommunity: http://www.momcommunity.com/

MyItForum: http://www.myitforum.com

System Center Forum: http://www.systemcenterforum.org

System Center Training: http://www.systemcentertraining.com/

Final Result

By combining Outlook 2007, RSS Feeds, NewsGroups/GatorNews, and Windows Desktop Search (WDS), we can now keyboard search on all the resources we need to keep up on the OpsMgr world!

OpsMgr.Rss.opml File

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<opml version="1.0">

<body>

<outline text="System Center Operations Manager Command Shell" type="rss"

xmlUrl="http://blogs.msdn.com/scshell/rss.xml"/

<outline text="Most Recent KBs for System Center Operations Manager 2007" type="rss"

xmlUrl="http://support.microsoft.com/common/rss.aspx?rssid=12584&ln=en-us&msid=fa8026752634c744bb02673f094222ce"/>

</body>

</opml>

OpsMgrNewsGroups.opml File

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<opml version="1.0">

<body>

<outline text="System Center Operations Manager Command Shell" type="rss"

xmlUrl="http://blogs.msdn.com/scshell/rss.xml"/

<outline text="Most Recent KBs for System Center Operations Manager 2007" type="rss"

xmlUrl="http://support.microsoft.com/common/rss.aspx?rssid=12584&ln=en-us&msid=fa8026752634c744bb02673f094222ce"/>

</body>

</opml>

05/04/2007

Capturing a FSMO role change

If you're wondering how be notified if you have an AD Operations Master role change, we discovered an undocumented event id that is logged. And of course, if it is logged, MOM can watch for it!

Event 1458 in the Directory Services log is logged regardless of which role is changed. The description of this event is:

The operations master role represented by the following object has been transferred to the following domain request at the request of a user.

The event is logged to in the Directory Services event log for the new role master, and the message description also indicates the domain controller previously holding that role.

When creating the role, the provider is Directory Services, and the eventid is 1458.