Deploying Client Monitoring in the Single Server, Single Management Group Scenario

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Applies To: Operations Manager 2007 R2, Operations Manager 2007 SP1

Client Monitoring in Operations Manager 2007 consists of two features and a group of client-specific management packs. The features are the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) and Agentless Exception Monitoring (AEM). Operations Manager 2007 also hosts management packs specifically for monitoring Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2000, and Microsoft Information Worker applications.

All Client Monitoring features are configured from the Operations console. This section gives a brief description of each of these features and any prerequisites to their deployment. For more information about the implementation and configuration of these services, see the Operations Manager 2007 Operations Guide and the topic "Client Monitoring" in the Operations Manager 2007 Help.

Customer Experience Improvement Program

When the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) is active on a client or server, it gathers information about how Microsoft products are used on that particular computer, processes it, and sends it to Microsoft, where it is combined with other CEIP data for further analysis. Examples of data collected are as follows:

  • Configuration, such as the number of processors, the version of Windows used, or the number of network connections.

  • Performance and reliability, such as program responsiveness and the speed of data transmission.

  • Program use, such as most frequently used features and Help and Support center usage.

This data is used to help Microsoft solve problems and to improve the products and features that customers use most often. This data does not contain any personally identifying information, and although the data does include the IP address that is used to access the Internet, Microsoft does not use this address. For more information about CEIP, see the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=86483).

Rather than having a large number of clients each reporting this data individually, you can have your clients send the CEIP data to the Operations Manager management server as a central collection point. The management server that hosts the CEIP service can then forward the data to Microsoft. The communication of CEIP data from the clients to the management server can be SSL secured, can use Windows Authentication, and can be directed over a configurable port; the default is TCP 51907. CEIP is configured on the management server by using the Client Monitoring Configuration Wizard.

Agentless Exception Monitoring

When an application error occurs or when an operating system stops responding, an error log is generated. This can be in the form of a dump file (.dmp) or other encoded or plain text log file. These logs contain valuable information that is used to determine the root cause of the problem. Microsoft Online Crash Analysis makes use of these reports.

When Agentless Exception Monitoring (AEM) is enabled on a management server, clients can be configured to send their error reports to the management server to be stored on a file share.

Operations Manager can then aggregate the data and provide views and reports for your use. The management server also forwards the data to Microsoft rather than having all the clients perform this individually. AEM is configured by using the Client Monitoring Configuration Wizard, and it allows configuration of the following:

  • The file share path

  • Election to collect error reports from Windows Vista-based clients

  • Management server port for communication

  • SSL encryption

  • Windows Authentication

  • The name of the organization to include in the reports

Client Configuration

If you elect to deploy either of these features in your organization, you must create a Group Policy Administrative template to be applied to the appropriate computers. This template is generated by the Client Monitoring Configuration Wizard and can be applied individually or through Active Directory Domain Services. The default template name is the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the server with the .adm extension.