Webcast - System Center Operations Manager Technical Overview

Question 1: What are some of the differences between System Center Operations Manager, System Management Server, and System Center Essentials?

Answer 1: Microsoft System Center Operations Manager is a software solution to meet the need for end-to-end service monitoring in the enterprise IT environment. Operations Manager provides an easy-to-use monitoring environment that monitors thousands of servers, applications, and clients to provide a comprehensive view of the health of an organization’s IT environment.

Microsoft System Management Server (SMS) 2003 R2 builds upon the base of the SMS 2003 SP2 foundation to provide a comprehensive solution for change and configuration management for the Microsoft platform. SMS 2003 R2 enables organizations to quickly and cost-effectively provide relevant software and updates to users from Microsoft and non-Microsoft vendors. Its successor will be System Center Configuration Management Server

Microsoft System Center Essentials is a new management solution in the system Center family of IT systems management products specifically designed for midsize businesses. Essentials 2007 provides a unified management solution that enables IT professionals in midsize organizations to proactively manage their IT environment with increased efficiency.

Question 2: Is there already a SCOM 2007 Administrator's Guide, like a document of how to do everything within SCOM 2007?

Answer 2: System Center Operations Manager 2007 Product Documentation is available for download. There is an MSPress book being published in January titled Microsoft® System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Administrator's Companion

Question 3: If I have no gateway server, then I won't be able to manage my servers in my perimeter network? Is there no workaround to this, like simply opening firewall ports to allow communication between the management server and the un-trusted servers?

Answer 3: No, you can still manage you servers in the perimeter but you’ll have toput certificates on all the machines with agents, which might become cumbersome in a large enterprise with many machines.

Question 4: Is there any Microsoft official training for SCOM 2007?

Answer 4:   There are currently many web-based training classes available now at Microsoft.com, and Instructor-led classes will be available shortly.

Question 5: Let’s say I have two rules 1 and 2, to raise an alert email whenever there is an error in the event viewer. If there is an alert email generated on rule 1, I would like to send that email to person A only and if rule 2 then email to person B only. How can I configure condition based email send in 2007?

Answer 5: I would create two Operations Manager User Roles and then add the users to their respective role. Then configure the rules to alert the respective user role.

Question 6: In the diagram view, can Visio 2007 be leveraged or used in anyway (for a given product context?)

Answer 6: The diagrams can be saved in .JPG, .BMP and .PNG format.

Question 7: Is there a webcast available on System SCOM and the Exchange MP?

Answer 7: Not at this time, but check here for what is available, System Center Operations Manager Webcasts

 

Question 8: Can you please explain the difference in agent licensing....standard vs Enterprise? Are they actually two different agents or just a cost difference based on what they are actually monitoring?

Answer 8: The cost difference is based on what’s being monitored.

Operations Manager 2007 Licensing

Operations Management License (OML) Offerings

Enterprise OML

$426 U.S.

Monitoring, troubleshooting, audit collection, and reporting for any server workload or application, including the base operating system, system hardware, and other management agents on the system

Standard OML

$155 U.S

Monitoring, troubleshooting, audit collection, and reporting for servers, including Storage/File/Print and Networking workloads, the base operating system, system hardware, and other management agents on the system

Client OML

$32 U.S.

Monitoring, troubleshooting, audit collection, and reporting for any client application, base operating system, system hardware, and other management agents on the system

Click here for more detailed information on the different Microsoft System Center Server Management License (SML) Suites

Question 9: What are AEM computers on the last slide?

Answer 9:  Agentless Exception Monitoring

AEM enables you to monitor operating systems and applications for errors. Error reporting clients are configured with group policy to redirect error reports to an Operations Manager 2007 Management Server. By staging error reports on a Management Server, you are able to filter which errors are sent to Microsoft. Operations Manager 2007 is also able to provide detailed views and reports that aggregate error data across your organization. The views and reports provide knowledge about failures and offer solutions, as available, to help resolve the issues.

You can determine how often an operating system or application experiences an error and the number of affected computers and users. This determination enables you to direct your efforts where they will have the greatest benefit to the organization.

When the error reports are anonymously synchronized with Microsoft, per the Privacy Statement for the Microsoft Error Reporting Service, solutions that are available for the respective errors are returned. You can also use AEM to return solutions for issues experienced with your internally developed applications.