System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed

This book is your most complete source for in-depth information about Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007! System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashedis a comprehensive guide to System Center Operations Manager (OpsMgr) 2007. Like its MOM 2005 predecessor, OpsMgr 2007 helps you implement operations management, but with a far different and more holistic approach from MOM 2005rs"s focus on individual servers. This book guides you through designing, deploying, and configuring OpsMgr 2007. You will find detailed information and hands-on experience on topics such as estimating database sizes and designing redundant OpsMgr configurations. You learn how to tackle challenges such as setting up ACS, establishing client monitoring, using and creating synthetic transactions and distributed applications, and developing management packs and reports. Size your OpsMgr databases Architect for redundancy and performance Install or migrate to OpsMgr 2007 Secure OpsMgr Back up OpsMgr components Understand how monitors and rules work Manage different aspects, including ACS, client monitoring, synthetic transactions, and distributed applications Extend OpsMgr Develop management packs and reports CD-ROM includes: Database sizing spreadsheet Utilities, management packs, and reports Microsoftrs"s best practices for rule and monitor targeting and PowerShell Cheat Sheet Live Links--more than 200 hypertext links and references to materials, connectors, sites, and newsgroups related to OpsMgr Contents Introduction 1 Part I Operations Management Overview and Concepts 1 Operations Management Basics 11 2 Whatrs"s New 63 3 Looking Inside OpsMgr 97 Part II Planning and Installation 4 Planning Your Operations Manager Deployment 137 5 Planning Complex Configurations 203 6 Installing Operations Manager 2007 233 7 Migrating to Operations Manager 2007 277 Part III Moving Toward Application-Centered Management 8 Configuring and Using Operations Manager 2007 303 9 Installing and Configuring Agents 369 10 Complex Configurations 425 11 Securing Operations Manager 2007 471 Part IV Administering Operations Manager 2007 12 Backup and Recovery 539 13 Administering Management Packs 593 14 Monitoring with Operations Manager 647 Part V

Kerrie Meyler, MA, BA, MCT, MCSE, CNA, MOM MVP, is an independent consultant and trainer with more than 15 years of Information Technology experience. A previous Senior Technology Specialist at Microsoft, she focused on infrastructure and management solutions, presenting at numerous product launches. Kerrie was also a Management Insider, presented at internal Microsoft conferences, and received company recognition and awards, including a SPAR MGS award. Kerrie presented on Operations Manager 2007 and gave several podcasts at TechEd 2007. As an MCT, she worked with Microsoft Learning on Microsoft Official Curriculum (MOC) for several courses, and did the “beta teach” for course 2250, “Implementing Microsoft Operations Manager 2000.” More recently, Kerrie participated in the alpha walkthrough for Certification Exam 70-400, “Configuring Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007.” She also participated in defining the domain objectives for Certification Exam 70-402, “IT Operations and Service Management.” Kerrie is the lead author of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Unleashed, and was awarded the MOM MVP award just as this book was being completed.

 

Cameron Fuller, BS, MCSE, MOM MVP, is a Managing Consultant for Catapult Systems, an IT consulting company and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with numerous competencies, including Advanced Infrastructure and Network Infrastructure Solutions. He focuses on management solutions, and serves as the Microsoft Operations Management Champion for Catapult. Cameron’s 15 years of infrastructure experience include work in the retail, education, healthcare, distribution, transportation, and energy industries. Cameron continually focuses on improving his existing business and technical skill sets through hands-on experience and leveraging certifications, including MCSE (since NT 3.51), MCSA, A+, Linux+, Server+, and CCSA. Cameron is also a public speaker, presenting on Operations Manager 2007 at TechEd 2007, co-presenting with Microsoft on MOM 2005 at TechEd 2005, and the MOM 2005 product launches in Dallas and Tulsa. He is the co-author of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Unleashed.

 

John Joyner, LCDR USN-R, BS, MCSE, MOM MVP, is a presenter and inventor in the systems management space. A senior architect at ClearPointe--a leader and pioneer in the Managed Services Provider (MSP) industry--he has been using Microsoft systems management technologies to deliver SLA-based guarantees of application performance in multi-tenant environments since 2001. John received his B.S. in Business Administration on a U.S. Navy scholarship. As a Navy computer scientist, he deployed Microsoft Mail to the battlefield for NATO in the former Yugoslavia in 1995, and then took Exchange 4.0 afloat in 1996 for the first Internet-connected aircraft carrier battle group deployment in history. John retired a Lieutenant Commander from the Navy in 1998 and has worked for ClearPointe since then. He has provided consulting services on behalf of Microsoft to design some of the world’s largest Operations Manager deployments. John speaks Italian and Dutch, and visits his daughter in Amsterdam as often as possible. John is a contributing author of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Unleashed, and was recently selected as a MOM MVP.

 

Contributor

Andy Dominey, MCSE, MOM MVP, has been in the IT industry for 8 years. He started out as a field service and support engineer and worked his way up to systems administrator, responsible for MOM, Active Directory, Exchange, web hosting, SAN technology, and clustering for an Exchange hosting provider based in the United Kingdom. He is currently working as a Senior Consultant for 1E, a Windows-management firm based in the United Kingdom. Andy has a number of large-scale MOM and OpsMgr deployments to his credit and is an avid evangelist for the product. He was also awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for MOM for the past 3 years. Andy authored Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Field Guide (Expert’s Voice).

 

Introduction IntroductionThe process of operations management is a combination of people, procedures, and tools--all three are necessary, and the absence of one component can put an entire enterprise solution at risk. At a more granular level, operations management is about correlating what may appear to be seemingly unrelated events and data across machines to determine what information is significant to your operational environment versus what is not.With System Center Operations Manager 2007, Microsoft continues its commitment to providing a solid monitoring and management product. Although Microsoft licensed NetIQ's Operation Manager technology in 2000, not until Operations Manager 2007 did Microsoft put its finishing touches on reengineering the product. Now in its third major release, the software formerly known as "MOM," or Microsoft Operations Manager, has been rewritten and rebranded into Microsoft's System Center product line. Operations Manager 2007 concentrates on end-to-end application monitoring, moving beyond its previous server monitoring focus.Operations Manager 2007 monitors the health of an application, defined and measured by the health of the various pieces that make up that application. In today's environment, applications are no longer monolithic, so monitoring health typically includes network devices and the various pieces of a distributed application. Monitoring at the component level means that if a database used by an application has a problem, Operations Manager knows which application is affected.Operations Manager 2007 also brings to the plate the capability to manage security and audit data, client machines, and common desktop applications, and collect and report on user application errors. Rather than being evolutionary in its changes as are most version updates to an application, Operations Manager 2007 is truly revolutionary in its approach to monitoring when compared to its MOM 2005 predecessor.Successfully implementing Operations Manager requires planning, design, and a thorough understanding of how to utilize its many capabilities. This complete guide for using Operations Manager 2007 from the authors of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Unleashed gives system administrators the information they need to know about Operations Manager 2007 and what it can do for their operations--from an overview of why operations management is important, to planning, installing, and implementing Operations Manager 2007.System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed provides a comprehensive guide to this newest version of Microsoft's premier management product.As always, we do have a disclaimer: Resources and management packs related to the product continue to change rapidly. Sometimes it seemed that even before we finished a chapter, the information was changing. This has been particularly challenging because Microsoft is close to releasing its first service pack for Operations Manager 2007 as we complete this book. We have done our best to present the information as it relates to both the released version and the service pack, even as that continues to take shape. The information in the book is current as of the time it was written, and the authors have done their best to keep up with the constant barrage of changing management packs, utilities, URLs, and Knowledge Base articles. Part I: Operations Management Overview and ConceptsPart I of this book introduces the reader to Operations Manager 2007 (OpsMgr), outlining its features and functionality and comparing and contrasting it to MOM 2005.Chapter 1, "Operations Management Basics," discusses the concepts behind operations management and Microsoft's management approach, and introduces Microsoft's management suite of products. An overview of ITIL