introduction
welcome to the first article of Management Pack Series of SCOM course
this article we will have an overview about Management Pack MP , the concepts , and how does it work
What is Management Pack ?
SCOM management packs are software agents that are installed on each system or service to gather performance data.
A management pack includes monitoring configurations and data collection parameters tailored for specific applications and services.
Management Packs (or MPs), essentially, are the brain of SCOM and the core of its monitoring.
All the monitoring logic and preferences come from and go into Management Packs.
MPs are basically the collection of Rules, Monitors, Discoveries, Reports, and all the workflows that are necessary for successfully monitoring a particular technology, product or infrastructure.
For example,
- SQL MP will monitor SQL databases,
- an AD MP will monitor the Active Directory,
- a Windows OS MP will contain the logic to monitor Windows Operating System,
- and so on.
Management Pack Goals
Primary business goals of MP :
- Extend SCOM monitoring to ALL mission critical IT services
- Ensure that business services ALWAYS remain available and healthy
- Have the ability to tune monitoring parameter as business need
MP components
MP contain the following :
- Monitor
- Rule collect data from DB ware house
- Tasks : action to be done when monitor reached certain value , like run program or script or even restart server … etc
- Views : customized look at item that might be related to certain MP
- Knowledge
- Report
- Discovering object or running script or gathering information that required credential to access appropriate resources
Primary root MPs
some MPs are reference for other MPs like :
- MP [Windows.Server.NetworkDiscovery] ; is required for SCOM server to search for client in network
- MP [SystemCenter.NetworkDiscovery.Internal] is used to discover network devices through SNMP
- MP [system library ] and all library MPs are the absolute root of all other MPs in SCOM , and is the only MP that doesn’t have dependencies
MP sealed Vs UNsealed
- When you create a Management Pack using the Operations Console or the Management Pack Authoring Tool, it is unsealed by default. To seal a Management Pack, you need an Operations Manager 2007 Resource Kit tool called MPSeal and a client certificate. For more information about sealing a Management Pack, see How to Seal a Management Pack.
- Management pack name include [MP description + unique ID ] to avoid any conflict , but what we see in console is just description of MP
- Default location of MPs : [C:\Program Files (x86)\System Center Management Packs]
- While installing the Management Pack you can browse and select the drive you want to save those Management Packs in. Even if you install it to the default location you can always cut and paste to another drive
- When you imported management pack into your SCOM environment, the management pack information is stored into SCOM DB. Once you imported of the management pack into SCOM system, you can remove the management pack from the HD without affect the SCOM operation.
MPs Format
- sealed Management Pack is a binary file that cannot be edited with extension .Mp
- An unsealed Management Pack is an XML file that can be edited.
- MPB :Management Pack Bundle à allow to package all MP dependencies in auto distribute it to SCOM agent
MP import Vs install Vs Download
- download MP is just download .msi file from Microsoft site
- install MP : extract msi file into .mp or .mpb [bundle] to default location of management pack [C:\Program Files (x86)\System Center Management Packs]
- import MP : send MP file to QSL DB and make it ready to be use à after that we can delete file from [C:\Program Files (x86)\System Center Management Packs] without effecting management pack
- before we import mp file à we have to import its dependence
- some MP unable to be installed from website [category] directly >> instead we can download exe file to HDD and extract it , then import from HDD
- once MP has imported à it will be reflected in monitoring workspace , but it will take a few to start gather information from SCOM agent
Romave MP
sometime it hard to remove MP from SCOM console >
you can use SCOM Powershell to remove MPs
Get-SCOMManagementPack | format-list$MPS = Get-SCOMManagementPack -name "*SQL*"Remove-SCOMManagementPack -ManagementPack $MPS
conclusion
this article we have got an overview to Management Pack
next articles we will see how to deal with MPs
thank you
