System Center Operations Manager is a cross-platform data center management system for operating
systems and hypervisors. It uses a single interface that shows state, health and performance
information of computer systems. It also provides alerts generated according to some availability,
performance, configuration or security situation being identified. It works with Microsoft
Windows Server and Unix-based hosts.
History The product began as a network management
system called SeNTry ELM, which was developed by the British company Serverware Group plc.
In June 1998 the intellectual property rights were bought by Mission Critical Software,
inc who renamed the product Enterprise Event Manager. Mission Critical undertook a complete
rewrite of the product, naming the new version OnePoint Operations Manager. Mission Critical
Software merged with NetIQ in early 2000, and sold the rights to the product to Microsoft
in October 2000. It was renamed Microsoft Operations Manager and had another release
as Microsoft Operations Manager 2005. Microsoft renamed the product from Microsoft Operations
Manager to System Center Operations Manager and released System Center Operations Manager
2007. System Center Operations Manager 2007 was designed from a fresh code base, and although
sharing similarities to Microsoft Operations Manager, is not an upgrade from the previous
versions. Central concepts
The basic idea is to place a piece of software, an agent, on the computer to be monitored.
The agent watches several sources on that computer, including the Windows Event Log,
for specific events or alerts generated by the applications executing on the monitored
computer. Upon alert occurrence and detection, the agent forwards the alert to a central
SCOM server. This SCOM server application maintains a database that includes a history
of alerts. The SCOM server applies filtering rules to alerts as they arrive; a rule can
trigger some notification to a human, such as an e-mail or a pager message, generate
a network support ticket, or trigger some other workflow intended to correct the cause
of the alert in an appropriate manner. SCOM uses the term management pack to refer
to a set of filtering rules specific to some monitored application. While Microsoft and
other software vendors make management packages available for their products, SCOM also provides
for authoring custom management packs. While an administrator role is needed to install
agents, configure monitored computers and create management packs, rights to simply
view the list of recent alerts can be given to any valid user account.
Several SCOM servers can be aggregated together to monitor multiple networks across logical
Windows domain and physical network boundaries. In previous versions of Operations Manager,
a web service was employed to connect several separately-managed groups to a central location.
As of Operations Manager 2007, a web service is no longer used. Rather, a direct TCP connection
is used, making use of port 5723 for these communications.
The Command Shell Operations Manager 2007 includes a new extensible
command line interface called The Command Shell, which is a customized instance of the
Windows PowerShell that provides interactive and script-based access to Operations Manager
data and operations. Like Windows PowerShell it is based on an object-oriented programming
model, and uses version 2.0 of the Microsoft .NET Framework. It has a superset of the commands
and functionality available in PowerShell that provide administrators with the ability
to automate Operations Manager administration. Management Pack
SCOM can be extended by importing management packs which define how SCOM monitors systems.
By default, SCOM only monitors some basic OS-related services, but new MPs can be imported
to monitor services such as SQL servers, SharePoint, Apache, Tomcat, VMware and SUSE Linux.
Many Microsoft products have MPs that are released with them, and many non-Microsoft
software companies write MPs for their own products as well.
Whilst a fair amount of IT infrastructure is monitored using currently available MPs,
new MPs can be created by end-users in order to monitor what is not already covered.
Management Pack creation is possible with the System Center Operations Manager 2007
R2 Resource Kit, Visual Basic 2010 with Authoring Extensions and Visio MP Designer.
Versions Microsoft Operations Manager 2000
Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Service
Pack 1
System Center Operations Manager 2007 System Center Operations Manager 2007 Service
Pack 1 System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2
System Center Operations Manager 2012 System Center Operations Manager 2012 Service
Pack 1 System Center Operations Manager 2012 R2
See also Microsoft System Center
System Center Configuration Manager System Center Data Protection Manager
System Center Virtual Machine Manager Microsoft Servers
References
Books Fox, Chris. Essential Microsoft Operations
Manager. ISBN 0-596-00953-4. Kerrie, Meyler; Fuller, Cameron and Joyner,
John. System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed. ISBN 0-672-32955-7.
Kerrie, Meyler; Fuller, Cameron and Joyner, John. System Center Operations Manager 2007
R2 Unleashed. ISBN 0-672-33341-4. Kerrie, Meyler; Fuller, Cameron and Joyner,
John. System Center 2012 Operations Manager Unleashed, 2nd Edition. ISBN 0-672-33591-3.
Cornelissen, Bob; Keely, Paul, Greene, Kevin, Hadzhiyski, Ivan, Allen, Sam, and Sampaio,
Telmo. Mastering System Center 2012 Operations Manager. ISBN 978-1-118-12899-2.
External links System Center Operations Manager
Microsoft Tech Net guide on MOM Microsoft Operations Manager SDK
Introducing System Center Operations Manager 2007 A tutorial by David Chappell, Chappell
& Associates Operations Manager 2007 R2 Management Pack
Authoring Guide System Center Central
MyITForum(System Center community) TechNet Ramp Up: Learn how to install, implement
and administer Operations Manager 2007 R2. Managing Privileged Accounts in System Center
Operations Manager Heterogeneous environments can now use Operations
Manager to manage their entire IT infrastructure Jonathan Almquist on Operations Manager
Quest Communities: Space: SCOM Toolzz.com - Nice blog about System Center
Operations Manager Savision.com - Business Service Management
for System Center Operations Manager