Managing Computers

  • Article

System Center Essentials 2007 enables you to use the rules and monitors in Management Packs to track performance of your environment's managed computers and to track performance data such as the number and types of current active alerts.

The most relevant issues for an administrator using Essentials 2007 are summarized as follows:

  • Customizing the available Essentials 2007 views

  • Creating overrides to control the amount of data collected

  • Customizing notifications

  • Understanding the difference between the Monitoring and Computers panes

  • Using the Essentials 2007 console

This section also includes guidance for interpreting the results of reports and alerts and information about how the results relate to the health and performance of your environment.

Customizing Views

Essentials 2007 provides a number of widely inclusive views--for example, all alerts that have occurred in the last 24 hrs, only x alerts, and so on. In the Monitoring pane, you can change the display options of any view and then save it as a personalized view. In doing this, you can filter out columns that you do not want to see, add or remove properties from the view, and sort the included objects differently. If the view is not a state view, you can also group objects differently. You can create any number of different personalized views from a single view.

In addition, you can use the Scope, Find, and Search buttons on the Essentials 2007 console toolbar to filter your view of monitoring data so that you can find the exact monitoring object or group of objects that you need. For more information about how to use scope, search, and find operations, see "How to Manage Monitoring Data Using Scope, Search, and Find."

Creating overrides

A Management Pack in Operations Manager 2007 begins monitoring as soon as it is imported into a managed network environment. To accomplish this, a Management Pack contains default settings and thresholds that are set by the vendor of the Management Pack. These settings represent the vendor's definition of a healthy state for its product. You can use overrides to adjust these default settings and customize them for your network.

Object types in Management packs are often broad in scope. Because overrides can apply to a group of managed objects, you can use overrides and groups to reduce the data collection of these monitors, attributes, object discoveries, and rules to only the information that you need.

For more information on adjusting overrides, see "How to Monitor Using Overrides in System Center Essentials."

For more information on creating custom computer groups to target overrides, "How to Create and Manage Groups in System Center Essentials."

For a video about adjusting monitors using overrides, see the video presentation "Adjusting Monitors with Overrides."

Customizing Notifications

You can turn on notifications, which are turned off by default at installation, by turning on one or more notification channels in the Administration pane Settings node. The Notification Recipient and Notification Subscription functions are then made available for use.

To turn off notifications, just clear the check box for each notification channel as follows:

To close notification channels

  1. In the Essentials 2007 console, click the Administration button.

  2. In the Administration pane, click Settings.

  3. In the Settings pane, expand Type: General and double-click Notification.

  4. On the E-mail, Instant Messaging, and Short Message Service tabs of the Global Management Settings - Notification dialog box, clear the Enable <notification type> notifications check box.

  5. On the Command tab, remove any command channels that have been set up.

Once you have created one or more notification recipients and one or more notification subscriptions in the Notifications node of the Administration pane, notifications will be sent according to your settings. The notification subscription defaults are very broad, so to reduce the number of notification noise you receive, you should carefully choose the subscription properties to be the minimum necessary for you to get your critical information. For more information, see the video presentation on customizing notifications.

Understanding the Monitoring and Computers Panes

The Computers and Monitoring functions of Essentials 2007 look superficially similar in some ways. They both report alerts from computers, for example, and clicking an alert for a computer displays the same alert window in each. Also, the default view in Computers displays the summarized monitoring status (as well as a summarized update and the software deployment status). However, these functions are unique and are intended for very different purposes.

Computers

The views you can see when you click Computers in the Essentials 2007 console report information about discovered computers in your environment. This area is where you will manage computers as individual reporting units. You can see and change the membership of computer groups, get information about hardware and software inventory, and view the Health Report. This area is used mainly to manage computer groups and to make sure that computers are reporting back to the Essentials 2007 management server regularly.

Monitoring

The views you can see when you click Monitoring in the Essentials 2007 console report detailed information collected by the Management Packs imported into Essentials 2007 or displayed in a custom view. Management Packs install their own views in the Monitoring pane. In the Monitoring pane, you can create new views and customize current views. This area is used mainly to display all the performance data that has been collected, and it allows you to customize your views into that information.

Using the Essentials 2007 Console

You use the Essentials 2007 console to review the health of your IT environment: to note any active alerts, to become aware of any failed or delayed software and update deployments, to know which computers are not contacting the console, and so on. Which function you choose to use first depends on what the alerts indicate, your interests, and which functions of Essentials 2007 you use more often. The following is a brief summary of the functional areas of the console.

  • Computers
    Computer and computer group management, inventory, update management, and software deployment.
  • Monitoring
    Provides an aggregation of the available monitored information for all the objects that Essentials 2007 is monitoring. Allows customization of views.
  • Updates
    Provides information about the status of update synchronization, approval, and deployment.
  • Software
    Provides information about the status of software package approval and deployment.
  • Authoring
    Used to customize and configure Essentials 2007 monitoring settings.
  • Administration
    Used for administering and managing Essentials 2007 itself. Also provides access to Essentials 2007 settings for features that are set up in configuration wizards.
  • Reporting
    Provides access to Essentials 2007 reports on monitoring data, computer information, and update and software deployment status.