Overview

  • Article

Published : January 1, 2005

Author: Stacey Briggs

Program Manager: Adrian Maziak and Chris Wick

Applies To: Microsoft Operations Manager 2005, Systems Management Server 2003, Systems Management Server 2003 SP1

Document Version: Release 1.1

Acknowledgments

Primary Reviewer: Peter Lamanna

Technical Reviewers: Peter Lamanna, Nam Pham, and Edward Bell

Technical Editor: Richard Carey

Managing Editor: Sandra Faucett

The Microsoft® Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 Management Pack is a Microsoft Windows®-based product designed to make it easier for your organization to monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your SMS 2003 hierarchy.

The following sections familiarize you with deployment and technical information about the SMS 2003 Management Pack. With this information, you can plan your Management Pack deployment, understand the features that the Management Pack offers, and understand how to use those features to benefit your IT organization.

The Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 Management Pack for SMS provides improved capabilities for SMS 2003 monitoring, including the following:

  • Monitoring the starting and stopping of all SMS 2003 services, including critical dependent services like Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), Internet Information Services (IIS), Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) and Microsoft SQL Server™.

  • Alerting the SMS administrator to critical SMS status messages.

  • Monitoring backlogs of discovery data records (DDRs), software inventory, hardware inventory, status messages, and software metering on both primary site servers and management points.

  • Monitoring system resource usage.

  • Monitoring processing rates.

  • Monitoring the performance trends of many SMS performance counters by using views and reports.

  • Product knowledge content for all alerts and processing rules.

  • Detecting all SMS 2003 computers and computer groups.

  • Views.

  • Reports.

  • Monitoring of Device Management Feature Pack.

  • Tasks for executing SMS Administrator console applications.

  • State view containing the health of all SMS server roles and the SMS Advanced Client.

  • Service Discovery of important SMS server and SMS client information.

  • Suppression of Service Unavailable alerts arising from the execution of SMS Site Backup.

  • Topology diagram of the SMS site hierarchy.

  • SMS 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) configurable alerting on distributed program execution failure through SMS program properties.

For more information about monitoring scenarios and features, see the Monitoring Scenarios section later in this guide. The SMS 2003 Management Pack is not designed to do the following:

  • Provide the monitoring of SMS 1.2 and SMS 2.0.

  • Monitor mixed SMS environments. Mixed environments have SMS 1.2, SMS 2.0, and SMS 2003 installations running side by side.

  • Monitor issues on SMS client-only computers.

  • Provide an out-of-the-box monitoring solution that manages any SMS 2003 installation without any modifications. Rule thresholds are different for every SMS 2003 installation and customers must customize rules themselves.

On This Page

What’s New in This Update?
Recommended Knowledge
Supported SMS Configuration

What’s New in This Update?

Improvements to Existing Functionality

This Update to the SMS 2003 Management Pack improves on existing features as follows:

  • Performance for SMS Critical Status Message Monitoring has been improved by querying directly against the SMS site database and not through the SMS Provider. All status message monitoring rules under the SMS Provider rule group have been moved to the SMS Site Database Servers rule group. Any custom or company knowledge that has been added to these rules will be lost when using the Update Existing Management Pack option. See the following sections for more detailed information:

    • SMS 2003 Monitor SMS Status Messages

    • Important Considerations When Using the Update Option

  • SMS Critical Status Message Monitoring has been updated to include a new SMS Site Backup status message: Status message 5043, “SMS Site Backup was unable to back up file system object.”

  • The former Availability report is now named the Server Availability report and is based only on SMS 2003 Site System Summarizer: Site System is possibly down alerts raised by Site System Status Summarizer monitoring. Previously, the report was based on this alert as well as most of the existing state alert-enabled rules. See the following sections for more detailed information:

    • SMS 2003 Monitor Site System Summarizer

    • Site System Status Summarizer-Based Availability Monitoring

    • SMS 2003 Server Availability Script

    • Server Availability Report

  • All Device Management public views now have a description.

  • Additional input script parameter checking is provided for the FileCountThreshold parameter of SMS 2003 Monitor SMS Inbox. See the following sections for more information:

    • Inbox Monitoring

    • SMS 2003: Monitor SMS Inbox Script

New Features and Functionality

This Update to the SMS 2003 Management Pack provides the following new features, scripts and reports:

  • A Management Point Availability report has been added based on management point health monitoring. Through a MOM event, a script reads and reports the duration that the management point state is unhealthy. See the following sections for more detailed information:

    • Component Health-Based Availability Monitoring

    • SMS 2003: Monitor Management Point Availability Script

    • Management Point Availability Report

  • Monitoring has been added for SMS Executive Crash Dumps. Monitoring SMS Executive failures is important because they impact overall SMS availability. It is critical to know when they happen and to investigate their root cause. See the following sections for more detailed information:

    • Executive Crash Dump Monitoring

    • SMS 2003: Monitor SMS Executive Crash Dumps Script

To deploy and operate the SMS 2003 Management Pack, it is recommended that you have the following knowledge and skills:

  • A working knowledge of MOM 2005 monitoring features.

  • An understanding of the MOM 2005 design architecture and the design architecture that is deployed in your organization.

  • A familiarity with the recommended process for deploying Management Packs as described in the Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Deployment Guide.

  • A working knowledge of SMS concepts and terminology, as described on the SMS 2003 Product Documentation Web site.

Supported SMS Configuration

The requirements for SMS 2003 and MOM 2005 are documented in their respective deployment guides. The SMS 2003 Management Pack monitors SMS 2003 RTM build 2726 and later releases, including SMS 2003 SP1.

The SMS 2003 Management Pack does not monitor SMS 1.2 and SMS 2.0. For more information about configuring SMS 2003 sites, see Running Configuration Scripts in this guide.

Download
Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 Management Pack Guide