Visual Studio Management Pack Authoring Series - Overview

As promised, here is a run through of authoring Management Packs using Visual Studio and the Operations Manager Visual Studio Authoring Extensions.

There are some great resources available and I'm not looking to replicate these but instead will refer to them where appropriate.

1. The definitive guide to Management Pack Authoring - MVA Series by Brian Wren

2. The System Center Management Pack Authoring Guide

The Series will be based on a set of Management Pack fragments as I find them easier to work with than using the wizards in Visual Studio. Each fragment just requires a find \ replace on a couple of items (class namespace and display name prefix) and it is ready to go.

What will I cover?

  1. Download pre-requisites
  2. Create a Key file for sealing Management Packs
  3. Create a class based on Windows Local Application along with a registry discovery
  4. Create an Instance Group (class and discovery)
  5. Create a Computer Group (class and discovery)
  6. Create a Health Service Watcher Group (class and discovery)
  7. Create State Views
  8. Create a Distributed Application (class, relationship, discovery and diagram view)
  9. Create a Dashboard that shows the Distributed Application Diagram View and State Views

If you have other requirements then let me know and I'll add them to the series. Once we have a service model built, I'll look to create posts for the Health Model - using fragments with monitors and rules.