Exclude Drive from Logical Disk Free Space Monitoring: Part 1

Since I just wrote an article on how to use the Logical Disk Free Space monitor, I figured this would be a nice compliment to that post.  I highly recommend reading that article to get an understanding of this monitor before moving forward with this post.

Someone asked me today, how to exclude a disk from the Operations Manager disk space monitoring, which is included in the Windows Server management packs (2000/2003/2008).  Specifically, he wanted to override monitoring of drives that were dedicated to host a Pagefile.

I can see this as a common request, as many shops move the system Pagefile to a dedicated drive for performance reasons.  In his scenario, the standard location for the Pagefile was the P drive.  However, as is often the case, there are exceptions to the rule.  Some Pagefiles are located on some other drive for whatever reason.

In this part 1 of this article, I’m going to explain how to override the Logical Disk Free Space monitor for a specific drive letter.  Later, I’ll follow up with a part 2 of this article, to explain how we can override this monitor for any drive that contains a Pagefile.

This will be a simple walkthrough with screenshots.  In the following scenario, I will override disk space monitoring for all E drives.  No reason to expound on the process, as the screenshots should explain with sufficient detail.

Create a group

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Name it, replacing E with your drive letter.  Give it a description (optional).  Save it to your custom MP, or create a new MP for your disk space monitoring drive groups and overrides.

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Click next two times, and click on Create/Edit rules…

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Follow the steps exactly, as numbered, replacing E with your drive letter.

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Click Ok.  Click next two times.  Click create.

You can verify the group populated by right-clicking on your new group and selecting View group members…

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Create the override

In the Authoring space, click Monitors.

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Change Change Scope.

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First click Clear All.  The type “logical disk” in the Look for box.  Then click Select All.  Click Ok.

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Expand one of the types, to the Logical Disk Free Space monitor.  Remembering you’ll need to override for each type, if you want the override to affect Windows 2000, 2003 and 2008 Servers.  Right-click the monitor, and create the override as follows.

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Click on View all targets.  Type in your drive group name in the Look for box.  Select your group, then click Ok.

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Check the Enabled parameter.  Select False from the Override Setting drop-down list.  Then click Ok.

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The result

Looking at health explorer, I can see that the E drive is no longer monitored by the Logical Disk Free Space monitor.  This is indicated by an empty green circle.  Whereas, the C drive is still being monitored.

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See you in Part 2, where I’ll explain how to create an override for any drive that hosts a Pagefile.