Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) For the Developer

The first point that is worth stating very clearly is that MOM is designed to pick up logging data from a wide variety of sources, including custom text log files written directly using the IO functionality in .NET. This means that all an application has to do to support a basic level of MOM monitoring is to ensure that accurate and timely log information is output somewhere. If an application takes advantage of .NET’s inbuilt Trace functionality, EIF, log4net or the Logging and Instrumentation Application Block, the application can certainly be configured to deliver output to a format that MOM can pick-up and monitor.

The technologies covered in this section are for applications and developers that wish to have a deeper level of integration with MOM. The integration techniques will start with the relatively simple option of providing a Management Pack with the application, then progress on to looking at extending the reporting of MOM, and finally look at deep integration with the MOM Connector Framework (MCF).

Microsoft Management Packs

Deciding whether it is worthwhile to provide a custom Management Pack for an application or software system is influenced by a number of criteria:

• The complexity of the software system.
• The likelihood that the end user of the software system will be using MOM Server.
• Developer skills and development budget available.
• Monitoring offerings of competitive products.

A good rule-of-thumb is when the documentation for monitoring the software system begins exceeding a page, it is time to codify this documentation into a Management Pack rather than burden each operator charged with monitoring the system with the task. Management Packs can start very small, and gradually grow in complexity as more monitoring criteria becomes apparent. If a Management Pack is planned for a product, it would be well worth spending some time with the operations staff at a pilot or beta site and note the various pieces of data that they are using to monitor the system. This can give an indication of which area of the system need to have there logging output improved, and which pieces of this logging data needs to be incorporated into a Management Pack.

Deciding which logging data to inspect in a management pack will be an iterative process, but the key starting point for existing products will be analysing past support calls from customers to determine which operational characteristics of the software system they are having the most trouble dealing with. If these problems can be tracked via a Management Pack, and MOM Alerts with appropriate Knowledge attached can be raised, the likelihood that the customer will be able to address the problem without the need for a support call will be significantly increased.

The simplest way of building a MOM Management Pack is to use the MOM Administrator console. Simply add the various elements needed in the Pack, such as computer groups, rules and tasks and then export the Pack to a standard Management Pack AKM file. This file can then be imported by other MOM users, and customised as required.

Further information on developing MOM Management Packs is available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c5b42e5b-68ed-45ea-8864-a9d4087d261d&displaylang=en.