Configuring the Operations Manager Monitoring Pack

Applies To: System Center 2012 - Operations Manager

This section provides guidance on configuring and tuning this monitoring pack.

• Best Practice: Create a Management Pack for Customizations

• Security Configuration

• Monitoring Agent Version

• Enabling Monitors for the Local Health Service

• Enabling Recoveries

• Configuring a Connected Management Group

• Enabling Rules in Place of Manual Reset Monitors

• Enabling Console Debug

Best Practice: Create a Management Pack for Customizations

As a best practice, you should create a separate management pack for each sealed management pack you want to customize.

When you create a management pack for the purpose of storing customized settings for a sealed management pack, it is helpful to base the name of the new management pack on the name of the management pack that it is customizing, such as “Biztalk Server 2006 Customizations”.

Creating a new management pack for storing customizations of each sealed management pack makes it easier to export the customizations from a test environment to a production environment. It also makes it easier to delete a management pack, because you must delete any dependencies before you can delete a management pack. If customizations for all management packs are saved in the Default Management Pack and you need to delete a single management pack, you must first delete the Default Management Pack, which also deletes customizations to other management packs.

Security Configuration

To provide security for backward compatibility, the management pack includes a Reserved Internal Operational Database Account Run As profile, but the account is not in use. Do not modify the Reserved Internal Operational Database Account Run As profile.

The following table describes monitors and rules that require a high-privilege account to run. When these monitors or rules run, they do not use the agent action account or the low-privilege account that you specified. Instead, they use the Privileged Monitoring Account Run As profile, which defaults to Local System and does not require association with a Run As account and target computer. No user intervention is required.

Monitoring Agent Version

This monitoring pack contains a monitor that checks the version of installed agents to verify that the agents are running a specific (or newer) version. The Agent Version Monitor checks for version 6.0.7221.0, which is the agent provided with Operations Manager 2007 R2. (The monitor is configured with this agent version to prevent an excessive number of alerts when an Operations Manager 2007 R2 environment is upgraded to System Center 2012 - Operations Manager.) You can configure the agent version for the monitor to check by using an override. The agent version for System Center 2012 - Operations Manager is 7.0.8560.0.

Enabling Monitors for the Local Health Service

The Health Service Watcher monitors the state of the remote health service from the perspective of the management server. The Health Service Watcher for agents includes four dependency monitors that assess the local health service and roll it up to the Health Service Watcher:

• Local Health Service Configuration

• Local Health Service Performance

• Local Health Service Security

• Local Health Service Availability

By default, only the Local Health Service Availability dependency monitor is enabled. The local health service dependency monitors for configuration, performance, and security are disabled because, if enabled in an environment with more than 500 agents, they can degrade the processing performance of the Management Group.

If your environment has fewer than 500 agents, you might want to enable one or more of these dependency monitors for specific agents or groups of agents.

To enable the dependency monitors

1. Open the Operations console, and then in the navigation pane, click the Authoring button.

2. Under Authoring, expand Management Pack Objects, and then click Monitors.

3. In the list of monitors, expand Health Service Watcher (Agent), expand Configuration, and then click Local Health Service Configuration, Local Health Service Performance, or Local Health Service Security.

4. On the toolbar, click Overrides, point to Override the Monitor, and then click For all objects of type: Health Service Watcher (Agent).

5. Under Override-controlled parameters, find the Enabled value that appears in the Parameter Name column, and then select the check box next to it in the Override column.

6. In the Override Setting column for the Enabled parameter, in the drop-down box, click True.

7. In the Select destination management pack list, click the appropriate management pack in which to store the override or create a new unsealed management pack by clicking New.

   Note

   By default, when you create a management pack object, disable a rule or monitor, or create an override, Operations Manager saves the setting to the Default Management Pack. As a best practice, you should create a separate management pack for each sealed management pack you want to customize, rather than saving your customized settings to the Default Management Pack. For more information, see Customizing Management Packs (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=140601).

8. When you complete your changes, click OK.

Enabling Recoveries

The following monitors have recovery tasks that are disabled by default:

• The Windows Management Instrumentation Service monitor sets state as unhealthy when the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) service is not running

  Recovery: If enabled, the recovery task for this monitor will attempt to automatically restart the WMI service when the monitor state is unhealthy.

• The Relationships between Agents and Management Servers Monitor sets state as unhealthy when an agent is detected to have more than one relationship to a management server, which can cause data corruption and prevent the configuration service from generating configuration for the full management group.

  Recovery: If enabled, the recovery task for this monitor removes unnecessary relationships between agents and management servers.

Use the following procedure to enable a recovery.

To enable a recovery

1. In the Operations console, click the Authoring button.

2. In the navigation pane, expand Management Pack Objects and then click Monitors.

3. In the Look for box, type the name of the monitor.

4. Right-click the monitor and then click Properties.

5. On the Diagnostic and Recovery tab, in the Configure recovery tasks section, ensure the desired task is selected and then click Edit.

6. On the Overrides tab, click Override. You can choose to override this monitor for objects of a specific type or for all objects within a group. After you choose which group or object type to override, the Override Properties dialog box opens

7. In the Override-controlled parameters section, click Enabled, and then click OK.

8. Close the task and monitor properties windows.

Configuring a Connected Management Group

The Operations Manager Monitoring Pack includes monitoring for testing the connectivity between connected management groups. This monitoring, which is disabled by default, performs a synthetic transaction and requires specific permissions to work. To ensure the required permissions are granted, configure the Connected Management Group Account Run As profile with the necessary associations.

If your environment includes connected management groups and you want to use monitoring for testing the connectivity between connected management groups, perform the following steps to configure the Connected Management Group Account Run As profile and enable the necessary monitors to turn on this monitoring.

To create the necessary associations for the Connected Management Group Account Run As profile for the connected management group account

1. Open the Operations console, and then in the navigation pane, click the Administration button.

2. Under Administration, expand Security, and then click Run As Profiles.

3. Double-click Connected Management Group Account, and then click the Run As Accounts tab.

4. Click New, and then in the Run As Account drop-down menu, click a Run As account that has permission to access the connected management group.

5. Under Matching Computers, click your connected management group, and then click OK.

To enable the Tiered Management Group Synthetic Transaction monitor

1. Open the Operations console, and then in the navigation pane, click the Authoring button.

2. Under Authoring, expand Management Pack Objects, and then click Monitors.

3. In the list of monitors, expand Connected Management Group, expand Entity Health, expand Availability, and then click Tiered Management Group Synthetic Transaction.

4. On the toolbar, click Overrides, point to Override the Monitor, and then click For all objects of type: Connected Management Group.

5. Under Override-controlled parameters, find the Enabled value that appears in the Parameter Name column, and then select the check box next to it in the Override column.

6. In the Override Setting column for the Enabled parameter, in the drop-down box, click True.

7. In the Select destination management pack list, click the appropriate management pack in which to store the override or create a new unsealed management pack by clicking New.

8. When you complete your changes, click OK.

Enabling Rules in Place of Manual Reset Monitors

The Operations Manager Monitoring Pack contains two monitors that require manual reset of health state, which are listed below. Rules have been included that you can enable in place of those monitors. The rules generate alerts for the same conditions as the monitors.

• You can disable Alert Subscription Configuration Monitor, and in its place, enable Alert Subscription Configuration Warning Notification Rule, which generates a warning alert on the same warning conditions as the monitor.

• You can disable the Alert Subscription Available monitor, and in its place, enable Alert Subscription Availability Critical Notification Rule, which generates a critical alert on the same critical conditions as the monitor.

For information about disabling a monitor, see How to Disable a Monitor or Rule Using Overrides (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=125661). Use the same procedure to enable the rules, but set the Enabled parameter to True.

Enabling Console Debug

The Report Console Watcher Monitor and the Web Console Watcher Monitor each have a Debug Flag parameter that is set to False by default. To enable debugging of the consoles, create an override for each monitor that sets the value of Debug Flag to True, which will cause console events to be logged to the Operations Manager event log with event log ID 99. These events will contain more details which can help you troubleshoot the problems.