| User Interfaces | |
| Administrator Console | The Administrator Console is where you can configure MOM 2005, discover servers, deploy agents, create and maintain user privileges, and create, import, or export management packs. |
| Operator Console | The Operator Console provides you with a view into the health of your systems, indicates problems, and recommends resolutions. You can even add company-specific troubleshooting information. Its multi-paned view allows you to easily see the information necessary to resolve a problem without having to open various windows or dialog boxes. |
| Web Console | The Web Console provides a subset of the Operator Console functionality using a Web browser. It gives you the flexibility to modify the status of an alert, update company knowledge, view the status of a computer, and receive e-mail notifications with links to a specific problem that needs attention from anywhere on the network. |
| Reporting Console1 | The Reporting Console allows you to view event, alert, and performance reports from a Web browser. It lets you subscribe to favorite reports and automatically receive new versions as they change. |
| Operations | |
| Scalability2 | Several capacity categories have been increased, including the number of managed computers per MOM server and the number of managed servers per console. |
| Tasks and Diagnostics | MOM 2005 allows you to define, export, import, and launch context-sensitive tasks and diagnostics. The tasks can run on the console, the server, or at the agent. These tasks include pinging a machine, flushing a DNS cache, or removing lingering objects from Active Directory. |
| Maintenance Mode | Switching a server into Maintenance Mode allows you to prevent alerts from being displayed in the Operator Console while a system is undergoing maintenance. |
| Rule Overrides | Rule Overrides let you change the default parameters and thresholds for selected computers or groups and set precedence to prevent potential conflicts caused by multiple overrides. |
| Auto–Alert Resolution | Auto Alert Resolution enables the agent to automatically update the MOM database when an alert has been corrected without operator intervention. |
| Instance–Aware Monitoring | MOM 2005 recognizes and monitors specific instances within a system. For example, it identifies specific databases within SQL Server, not just SQL Server, in general. This allows monitoring to be more detailed. |
| Cluster–Aware Monitoring | In a clustered server environment, MOM 2005 recognizes the virtual cluster server as well as the physical servers. This ability to instrument servers within a cluster allows management pack authors to create more granular rules. |
| Nested Computer Groups | The logical grouping of computers can be further subdivided to provide context for managing similar systems. For example, within the SQL Server 2000 Computer Group, there may be a computer group for Payroll and one for Order Fulfillment—each with different rules associated with it. |
| Responses Before Alert Suppression | Responses to an alert can be executed by the agent prior to the alert being suppressed. |
| Views | |
| State View | The State View provides you with a real-time, consolidated look at the health of the computers within the managed environment by server role, such as Active Directory domain controllers, highlighting the systems that require attention. |
| Diagram View | The Diagram View gives you a variety of topological views where the existence of servers and relationships are defined by management packs. The Diagram View allows you to see the status of the servers, access other views, and launch context-sensitive actions, helping you navigate quickly to the root of the problem. |
| Alerts View | The Alerts View provides a list of issues requiring action and the current state and severity of each alert. It indicates whether the alerts have been acknowledged, escalated, or resolved, and whether a Service Level Agreement has been breached. |
| Performance View | The Performance View allows you to select and display one or more performance metrics from multiple systems over a period of time. |
| Events View | The Events View provides a list of events that have occurred on managed servers, a description of each event, and the source of the problem. |
| Computers and Groups View | This view allows you to see the groups to which a computer belongs, the processing rule groups with which it is associated, as well as the attributes of the computer. |
| Security | |
| Reduced Account Privileges | On Microsoft Windows Server 2003, the MOM Service can run under the Network Service account. This account has lower permissions than the Local System account and enhances the security of the MOM Service. |
| Scopes of Operation | MOM 2005 allows for the creation of customized views, for example, to restrict a specific user to access and manage only a certain subset of computer groups. Scoping can be used to isolate users, preventing them from seeing and acting on each other's systems. |
| More Secure Agent/Server Communication | The communication between the MOM 2005 Agent and the Management Server is encrypted and digitally signed by default. The encryption has been enhanced and is based upon a dynamically-created key, rather than a static key. Dynamic keys make it harder to view data that is transferred between MOM components.
If Mutual Authentication is enabled, the communication is also authenticated. |
| Deployment | |
| Agentless Monitoring | MOM 2005 monitors agentless servers. This is aimed at IT environments where agents could not be installed on a few exception nodes. Agentless monitoring is limited to status monitoring only. |
| 64–bit Agent Support | MOM 2005 lets you manage applications running on 64–bit operating systems based on Intel IA–64 and AMD–64 platforms. |
| Internationalization | MOM 2005 operates in multi–language and localized environments. The consoles and management packs are localized for English, French, German, and Japanese languages. |
| Server Discovery Wizard | The Server Discovery Wizard in MOM 2005 allows for server lists to be imported from Active Directory, from a file, or from a typed list. It also allows the list to be filtered using LDAP queries, as well as name– and domain name–based wildcards. |
| Reporting | |
| Richer Reporting3 | By utilizing SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services, MOM 2005 can provide highly customized reports. Reports can be easily exported to Microsoft Excel, Adobe Acrobat, HTML, TIFF, CSV, or XML file formats. |
| Report Customization4 | Reports can be created and tailored through Visual Studio .NET. |
| Non-Microsoft Interoperability | |
| MOM Connector Framework5 | MOM Connector Framework is a Web service that enables bi-directional communication between multiple MOM instances and non-Microsoft management systems to share data and resolve problems more easily across an enterprise. |
| Management Pack Authoring | Non-Microsoft ISVs and application vendors can develop their own management packs to use with MOM 2005. Management packs can also be created for applications developed in-house. |
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