MOM Management Packs

In the article “MOM for SMBs” (January 2007, InstantDoc ID 94361), I introduced you to Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 Workgroup Edition, a powerful monitoring tool that helps you oversee your servers and business-critical infrastructure. Right out of the box, MOM 2005 Workgroup Edition is optimized for small and midsized networks that have as many as 10 servers. With management packs, you can extend MOM to monitor a wide variety of specific server-health indicators and alert you to important events that require administrator intervention, helping you prevent or quickly correct problem situations. Unlike the enterprise version of MOM, MOM 2005 Workgroup Edition comes with several management packs pre-installed, but you can always add more or create your own.

Using Management Packs
MOM management packs process data from a MOM client and look for information related to a specific product or service. For example, Microsoft provides management packs for products such as Microsoft ISA Server, Systems Management Server (SMS), Exchange Server, SQL Server, Windows Rights Management Services (RMS), and others. Microsoft also provides management packs for services such as DFS, DHCP, and DNS, and for monitoring conditions such as availability. MOM 2005 Workgroup Edition comes bundled with several common management packs; the MOM Enterprise Edition doesn’t. . . .