Ops Manager 2007 RC2 first impressions

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I am preparing a pilot deployment of OM 2007 RC2. There are a couple of first impressions I wanted to share with you:

1. This release has better performance then previous ones (RC1 and especially BETA2) - this is mainly perfromance of the backend components. There is still to improve in the UI performance, but I know from the Product Group that is still to come in RTM:)

2. Most of the features are in place ... and they really work:) I had some troubles setting up some of the elements, since the documentation is still not very concise and comprehensive. However with a little trial and error you can get the features to work for you just fine. There is a lot of "latency" in things like initial discovery and you should give your rules and MPs some time to discover all the objects (NOTE: some of them you will need to explicitly enable - in OM07 you do it with overrides, which are a lot better then in MOM2005). But once discovery is done the reaction to critical situations is pretty fast.

3. I generally love the whole architecture and the approach the PG took when designing OM2007. It's main advantage is EXTENSIBILITY. I suggest reading the MP Authoring guide (all available on connect.microsoft.com). It gives a very nice and holistic view of how the PG approached monitoring. Its all object oriented instead of previous MOM2005 being computer oriented. Which in today's IT makes a lot of sense.

4. I believe that OM2007 will be a very good platform for monitoring and management but switching from MOM 2005 (which was and still is my specialization) is sometimes painfully hard. That is because lots of the concepts used in 2005 version are no longer applicable to 2007. But I am sure that developing Management Packs will be much more exciting (though a bit more difficult, requiring more development knowledge) and allow much more functionality then in MOM 2005.

I will keep you all posted on any tips&tricks, how-tos, best practices I stumble upon during the deployment. But that probably will happen in 2007:)

 

I wish all of you a merry, happy, joyful Christmas and an even happier NEW YEAR!