We are starting a new series: OpsMgr Answer This questions. These are questions that you probably have asked yourself (or others) more than once. In this series, the writers of the System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed book will offer their opinions to some of those (sometimes rhetorical) questions. The first question we are discussing is, Why should one go to Operations Manager 2007? You may be using MOM 2005 and be perfectly happy with it. There is an adage: "if it works, don't break it" - so why go to Operations Manager 2007?

Andy Dominey suggests:

• Because of all the additional functionality OpsMgr gives you (not listing them as you all know the score there).
• MSFT is heading into the enterprise management space with X-Platform and NASM and this new version of MOM lays the groundwork in the architecture to support these components later on.
• WhatsUp Gold doesn’t provide effective and synthetic monitoring of Windows applications.
• MOM 2005 will be going out of support sooner than you might think :-) (and NO we haven't heard anything about this, but you know how Microsoft works)

From John Joyner:

• Most compelling single reason = MOM 2005 only monitors servers.  OM 07 monitors both servers and applications as objects. Dependencies between monitored objects permit cross-platform event correlation that was not possible with MOM 2005.
• Management Pack availability - New applications from Microsoft and third party vendors are getting new OM 07 MPs released for them, not MOM 2005 MPs.
• Interoperability with other System Center applications - Example: VMM 2008 requires OM 07 for monitoring. Service Desk will use OM 07-style management packs.

Cameron Fuller says:

First, let's look at MOM/OpsMgr versus WhatsUp Gold: WhatsUp Gold provides an environment with up and down monitoring, gathering of events, performance information, SNMP information in the network. It also provides reporting and notification functionality. From a high level it is really a good question of why MOM or OpsMgr versus WhatsUp Gold. The key reasons to go with a MOM or OpsMgr solution versus WhatsUp Gold are: 

• Issue identification – The Microsoft solutions gather specific information to identify issues based upon the products being monitored. IE: The Exchange Management Pack gathers specific event ID information versus gathering all error level alerts on a system.
• Decreased noise – The alerts generated by MOM and OpsMgr are more targeted as a result of how issues are identified and result in less noise.
• Issue resolution – The knowledgebase contained within management packs was developed by the product team which created the product (as an example, the Exchange team helped to develop the Exchange management pack), and is combined with MCS information to provide assistance with resolving issues identified within the environment. These issues can be more quickly resolved through leveraging tasks that are also provided as part of the management packs. When issues are identified, Operations Manager provides notification to the appropriate personnel so that they can respond to the issue more expediently.
• More Proactive – Faster issue identification and issue resolution combined with product knowledge provides a more proactive monitoring solution. Let’s take as an example an Exchange issue. An issue is identified based upon the number of drive reads and writes when compared with the management pack levels for what is acceptable on the Exchange server. An alert is generated notifying that the system is not performing optimally. Additional spindles can be added or faster storage can be used to address the issue before it affects the user community.

Regarding MOM 2005 vs. OpsMgr 2007, funny you should ask that. This is a great question that I have spent a lot of time thinking about. In fact, I did a presentation at MMS 2008 (S031) on the differences between MOM 2005 and OpsMgr 2007 and why you should go to the most recent version; I just posted my slide deck at http://systemcenterforum.org/wp-content/uploads/Why_Move_to_OpsMgr_2007.zip. The media version of it will be available on the MMS 2008 DVDs. The highlights of the presentation in are in the following table:

Kerrie Meyler offers:

There is a review of OpsMgr 2007 in the current issue of Redmond Magazine - see http://redmondmag.com/features/article.asp?editorialsid=2467, which includes a comparison of some of the MOM 2005 and OpsMgr 2007 features and real world application of those differences.

The biggest change in OpsMgr 2007 versus MOM 2005 is in its approach to monitoring. OpsMgr incorporates end-to-end monitoring - not just server monitoring with MOM 2005 as John mentioned, but the health of applications (including identified components across the network) and services. Which would you prefer to know?

• Your General Ledger application is impacted because its database is down (OpsMgr 2007), OR
• Server43 is not available and a database server is not reachable, and now you have to ask what is on that server and what applications/functionality does that impact? (MOM 2005)

In addition, as Cameron points out, OpsMgr 2007 incorporates security log monitoring (ACS), agentless exception monitoring (AEM), and client monitoring. If these are important to you, you should implement Operations Manager 2007.

Also of import is Andy's reference to the announcement that with Service Pack 2 OpsMgr will incorporate monitoring UNIX and Linux platforms as part of the base product and that the related code will be open source - yes, even at Microsoft pigs can fly! - and that SP2 will include NASM (Network Aware Service Management), which is an integration of EMC Smarts' Systems and Network Management Solution with OpsMgr.

Don’t forget PowerShell - the ability to script and run in batch just about anything you can do using the OpsMgr console - and in some cases, things you can't do with the console.

What are the downsides of OpsMgr 2007? If you are using MOM 2005, this really is a brand new product and not an upgrade, so there will be a learning curve. Think of going to NT4 from Windows AD domains (but also think of the improved functionality!). Along with the increased functionality, there are new areas of the user interface to learn.

We've been asked in the newsgroups:
How does database clustering require enterprise edition? I still don't understand ... You can cluster with standard, if so that's clustering, correct? Other than having more nodes than two, are there any benefits, as they relate to the OpsMgr database itself that you gain by going to Enterprise Edition over Standard? Does it do re-indexing and stuff that may take it offline while jobs run, etc that warrant paying more for Enterprise?

Okay, here's how it works:

• SQL Server Standard Edition supports up to two clustered nodes - and for the OpsMgr databases, those can be configured as active/passive
• SQL Server Enterprise Edition supports up to 8 clustered nodes

The operating system in either case MUST be Windows Server Enterprise (or Datacenter) Edition.

One advantage of clustering - other than the obvious one for high ability when one node of the cluster goes down, is that it can be used to maintain the functionality of the database in situations such as patch management (this is in addition to maintaining availability when there are temporary outages).

Let's look at a creative way where you can use more than two clustered nodes. This scenario involves a 4-way Active/Active/Active/Passive configuration using SQL Server Enterprise Edition, where:

• The first node would host the Operations database in the default cluster instance
• The second node would host the Data Warehouse database in a second instance
• The third node would host the ACS database in a third instance
• The fourth node would be available to provide high availability in case of the failure of a node in the cluster

Assuming the boxes have a lot of memory, this enables you - using a single clustered implementation of SQL Server Enterprise Edition - to host all the databases used by OpsMgr (and ACS).

Now let's look at some specific advantages of using SQL Enterprise Edition in an ACS installation.

ACS supports the use of SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition and SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition. The version used impacts how the system behaves during the daily 2:00 AM database maintenance window while the ACS database is reindexed. During the maintenance window, any database partitions with timestamps outside the data-retention schedule (14 days in the default configuration) are dropped from the database. Keep the following points in mind:

• If SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition is used, security event insertion halts and events queue up on the collector until maintenance is completed.
  This is because SQL 2005 Standard Edition cannot perform online index operations, whereas the Enterprise Edition can.
• If SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition is used, insertion of processed security events continues during the daily database maintenance, but at only 30%-40% of the regular rate.

SQL 2005 Enterprise Edition is probably mandatory in high-volume ACS environments because it reduces the chance of lost security events from filling the collector queue during the maintenance window.

The Operations database also has various maintenance tasks. This includes Discovery Data Grooming (2 AM), Partitioning and Grooming (12 midnight), Detecting and Fixing object space (every 30 minutes), and Auto Resolving Alerts (4 AM). These are in addition to a daily backup job you should schedule for all databases used by Operations Manager as well as significant system databases such as master and msdb (for more information on backups, see Chapter 12 of System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed). 

The Data Warehouse database also does optimizations, reindexing, and grooming.

SQL Server Enterprise Edition does not appear to be recommended for the Operations and Data Warehouse databases as strongly as Microsoft recommends it for ACS, due to the databases being maintained differently. However, based on your particular environment, you may discover benefits to using Enterprise Edition. Enterprise Edition is better able to handle querying large amounts of data (> 500 GB), which can make it valuable for the data warehouse component. Another example is that while SQL Standard can run on a maximum of 4 CPUs, Enterprise can handle 64 (based on the version of the OS that is running). Enterprise Edition also supports parallel index operations, parallel DBCC operations, table and index partitioning should you want to implement that, online index operations, and online page and file restores.

Microsoft has a scalability and performance comparison between the two versions available at http://www.microsoft.com/sql/editions/enterprise/comparison.mspx.

Lead author Kerrie Meyler has a recent podcast discussing the Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed book at http://www.cstechcast.com/home.aspx?Episode=25.

Kerrie also spoke with John Fontana of Network World discussing Microsoft's announcements for Operations Manager at MMS 2008, that article is available at http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/051208-microsoft-management-plans.html.

Co-author John Joyner is on youtube discussing System Center 2007 with Intel vPro technology (see the second half of the 3-minute video) at http://youtube.com/watch?v=K3uUgWRjtdc.

Happy reading/viewing!

We received the following question via email from "Scott," but his settings did not allow us to respond to him via email.

First and foremost, great site! I've gotten more help here than from almost any other source. Which brings me to my question...

Where would be the best place to look for information on the Data Warehouse SQL Server Authentication Account? It looks like ours was changed from the default, and now we're in a down state. Any info you can point us to would be wonderful.

Thanks a million, and keep up the good work!!

Scott, if you have the OpsMgr 2007 Unleashed book, check pages 502-503 which discuss Data Warehouse database security. Check the Run As Profile for the Data Warehouse SQL Server Authentication account Run As Account and make appropriate changes to the Run As Account, which should get you back in business!

Hope this helps.

The following question was posted at Cameron's blog, cameronfuller.spaces.live.com:

I bought your book "SCOM Unleashed" , and I find it very useful. Thanks for that.

I tried to followed your advice by importing the SCE MP for the network devices for monitoring Cisco switches and routers. The import is successful, but I am unable to populate it. It seems that there is an error related to the discovery of the SNMP interfaces. Here is the error I see in OpsMgr event log:

Loading managed module type in assembly "Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.SCE.Modules" with type name "Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.SCE.Modules.SnmpInterfaceDiscovery" failed with error code "80FF0001" in rule "Microsoft.SystemCenter.NetworkDevice.Interface.Discovery" running for instance "10.160.100.34" with id:"{3A9BC6C5-AA0B-353B-2670-438AD4FC97F1}" in management group "DimensionDataEurope". This may be because the type or assembly could not be found or the type does not have the MonitoringModuleAttribute.

I tried it on a SCOM 2007 without SP1 on a 32 bit OS and on a SCOM 2007 with SP1 on a 64bit machine with the same issues.

I seen in the forums that I am not the only one having this issue, see: http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?&query=snmp&lang=en&cr=US&guid=&sloc=en-us&dg=microsoft.public.opsmgr.general&p=1&tid=bfaf68ee-ea6a-4161-a578-dc734842d0fb

So my question is : Did you do something "secret" to have this MP working on SCOM 2007 ??

Thanks in advance.

Our answer:

1. We had no 'secret' to get it to work, we were fortunate that it even worked at all for the demos in that particular chapter. We don't recommend wasting any time on it. Rather please consider our coverage of the Essentials network device MP as illustrative of what management pack features are useful when authoring custom SNMP network device management packs with OM 07.
2. The book does not give advice to import it, rather, we used the features of the MP in the book as an example of what you can do with OM SMTP device monitoring, and we cautioned on page 871 that the Essentials MP is not supported or designed to work on OpsMgr. It did work partially at the time we wrote the chapter, but if since then other dependent MPs have been updated and it no longer works, that would not be surprising. We are not testing it anymore and we don't have it installed in any of our management groups.
3. The technology for monitoring network devices is planned to undergo changes in the next release of OpsMgr as part of a new Network Aware Service Monitoring solution that is highly scalable. Operations Manager users should not invest in or rely on the Essentials network device management pack. In the near term, we recommend use only the native OM 07 SNMP network device management pack features, or utilize a third party tool or add-on built for OM 07 as needed to support your network devices.

Hope this information helps!

In April 2008, Microsoft made available to selected testers (including the MOM MVPs) a pre-release version of the Windows 2008 Base OS and IIS  management packs (MPs) for OpsMgr 2007. Having these MPs is important since without a MP designed to monitor Windows Server 2008 systems, those servers with Windows 2008 running an OpsMgr agent show a "not monitored" state in the Operations console, since the Windows 2003 and Windows Server libraries cannot monitor Windows 2008.

When these management packs are imported into an existing OpsMgr 2007 management group, you are able to enjoy accurate OS health state for those Windows 2008 servers with OpsMgr agents installed on them, rather than showing the not monitored status.

A word of caution from Microsoft: Installing the pre-release Windows 2008 management packs into a production management group is not supported; in fact, it will cause any such management group to be specifically unsupported by Microsoft! These management packs should only be deployed in your lab and test environments.

OpsMgr 2007 agents can be push-installed to Windows 2008 systems, including those Windows 2008 servers installed with Core functionality. If you look at the screenshot below, you can see there are new target types (object classes) installed by the new MPs; and there are separate discoveries for Windows Server 2008 Core Computer and Full Computer types:

To test the management pack, we wanted to install OpsMgr on a Windows 2008 server that hosted an "all-in-one" management group, then import the pre-release Windows 2008 MP so that the server can monitor its own OS.

Installing OpsMgr 2007 on Windows Server 2008 is not yet fully supported by Microsoft, but fortunately Microsoft’s System Center Program Manager Satya Vel’s posting on the MOM Product Team blog was key to get to getting OpsMgr 2007 installed on Windows Server 2008:

http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2007/12/17/steps-to-install-opsmgr-2007-db-and-reporting-on-windows-server-2008-longhorn.aspx

(Also, see http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/archive/2008/05/07/opsmgr-2007-with-sp1-support-for-windows-server-2008-update.aspx for the current supportabiilty statement for running OpsMgr in a Windows 2008 environment.)

Like MVP Anders Bengtsson also discovered (see http://contoso.se/blog/?p=245), we did not encounter the “<remove name=…” sections Satya mentions, maybe because we didn’t install the Windows 2008 IIS compression features. Otherwise Satya’s article was all we needed to get OM 07 installed on a Windows Server 2008 “all in one” platform (including SQL 2005 SP2 installed locally).

We installed using a low-privilege scenario for our Data Warehouse Writer Account (DWWA) and Data Reader Account (DRA) services:

• Both the DWWA and DRA required the Log on Locally right
• We had to grant the DRA account permission to write to the file C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.2\Reporting Services\ReportServer\rsreportserver.config.

After OpsMgr 2007 (with Reporting) was installed on our Windows 2008 server, we installed the downloaded pre-release Windows 2008 MPs. One is for the Windows 2008 OS, the other is for the IIS component of Windows 2008. Both MP installs place a number of libraries and MPs in the %Program Files%\System Center Operations Manager Management Pack folder. You can select all the MPs in both install folders and import them all at once.

Give OpsMgr few minutes, and the Windows 2008 OS and IIS health and configuration data will populate the console, giving the same look and feel as with the existing Windows 200/2003 Server MPs. Microsoft has added the “copyright symbol” (©) to the Microsoft and OS names so that is a quick tip-off you have the new Windows 2008 OS MP installed. What you are actually looking at here is the DisplayName for the Operating System class, which is populated using a generic discovery that runs against all OS versions in the Microsoft.SystemCenter.Internal management pack. The value is taken from the Caption property of the Win32_OperatingSystem WMI class; apparently the introduction of the symbols was made in WMI for the first time with Windows Server 2008.

Here is the Health Explorer for the Windows 2008 server OS core Windows service rollup: