Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)

System Center Operations Manager 2007 is the server application for monitoring of IT services which allows administrators to gain complete idea of a status of all IT environment of the organization. Operations Manager can provide to IT departments periodic reports and also inform on the problems requiring urgent attention. Being continuation of Operations Management Server 2005, the Operations Manager 2007 application offers a set of new features and the upgraded components, providing the increased scalability and adaptability.

Operations Manager allows administrators to define monitoriruyemy services and applications according to the existing configuration of network. In the large organization, for example, deployment of e-mail can be provided not with one copy of Exchange Server, but several servers and network devices. In this case Operations Manager will allow the administrator to define graphically the components entering into specific service and to receive the uniform report for work of mail servers.

Operations Manager can be used for monitoring of work of both server, and client applications. Packets of management are sets of instructions which Operations Manager uses for monitoring of specific applications — are available to the majority of the existing server applications and operating systems of Microsoft company and also a great number of third-party producers.

At failure of the application or the operating room of the Operations Manager systems sends the relevant information to administrators. Operations Manager can obtain information from the Dr. Watson program and service of error logging Windows, to analyze this information and to include it in standard reports.

The SQL Server technology 2005 is included in the delivery of a product. The SQL Server technology delivered with this product can be used only for support of Operations Manager 2007.

Some opportunities and improvements

• The improved monitoring of performance and availability of applications in heterogeneous platforms
• Monitoring of Windows, Linux and UNIX of servers – all via the single console.
• Distribution of end-to-end monitoring of the distributed applications on any workload started on Windows platforms, UNIX and Linux.
• Maximizing availability of virtual workloads thanks to integration with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008.
• Management of applications in a data processing center
• High performance of monitoring of WEB PAGES.
• Control of accomplishment of service agreements (SLA)
• Improvements in reporting system
• Effective detection and problem resolution.
• The improved functionality and performance of the management console
• Viewport and an output of results are loaded quicker.
• The opportunities for development of modules of management which are built in the console

In July, 2011 Microsoft announced the beta of the product System Center Operations Manager 2012, tool kit for monitoring of performance of IT-infrastructures and applications with support of public and private "clouds".

Automation of the procedure of recovery of servers after failure became one of key features of the Operations Manager 2012 system. Other noticeable innovation are enhanced capabilities of monitoring of networks. According to the publication on the website of Microsoft TechNet, the beta of the product Operations Manager 2012 supports detection and monitoring of network routers and switches, including collects information on network interfaces and ports on these devices and data on virtual local area networks (VLAN) in which they are involved.

As well as other solutions of the Microsoft System Center series, a new product are supported by a possibility of application monitoring, started in public or private "cloud" and also estimates of performance of diverse environments which part systems based on Windows platforms, Unix and Linux are.

System Center Operations Manager 2012 provides function of consolidation of results of monitoring and providing access to them from the single console. IT-specialists will be able to use templates for creation of the special dashboards intended for the solution of specific tasks.

System Center Operations Manager 2012 supports monitoring of performance of the .NET and JEE applications. For the solution of this task the technologies inherited by Microsoft as a result of acquisition of AVIcode company are used.

The release of the solution Operations Manager 2012 is planned for the second half of 2011 along with other products of the line of Microsoft System Center.

The company Microsoft considers the Operations Manager 2012 system as one of the major tools for management of private clouds. When installing SCOM 2012 in all detected services the agent who helps to monitor work of computing environments, including physical servers and virtual resources and also private cloud resources in data processing centers is established. The whole set of additional packets of management using which IT specialists can implement support of monitoring for third-party solutions and different non-standard components also is a part of a product.

Already now it is known of readiness of several packets of management (Management Pack) for the Operations Manager 2012 system, including solutions for support of the Apache Tomcat application server, the platforms IBM WebSphere, Java Enterprise Edition, Oracle WebLogic and Red Hat JBoss. The Operations Manager 2012 platform allows to monitor work not only application servers, but also applications, providing diagnostics for web applications based on .NET and J2EE technologies and also applications based on a public cloud platform of Microsoft Windows Azure. It is remarkable that the Microsoft company promises a full-fledged work of the Operations Manager 2012 system in different operating systems, including Windows, Linux and Unix.

One of new features of Operations Manager 2012 RC which appeared only in candidate release version is the possibility of monitoring of network. Now SCOM 2012 allows to trace all topology of connections between servers. Besides, SCOM 2012 RC allows to detect and trace routers and switches in networks, including each network interface and port on these devices and also virtual local area networks on which these ports and interfaces are used.

Among other new products of Operations Manager 2012 RC it is possible to pay attention to an opportunity to use the scripting Windows PowerShell 2.0 mechanism at control of machines with the Linux and Unix operating systems. The packet of management of UNIX/Linux of Shell Command Template Management Pack allows to create rules, tasks and indicators which operation will depend on execution of console commands. The SCOM 2012 RC system offers own set of scripts PowerShell (cmdlet) which can be identified on the SC prefix before the name.

As it was already known, in SCOM the Microsoft company departed from the concept of the uniform root server of management in Operations Manager 2012, having made all servers of management of equal partners. Now users can integrate servers of management in management teams – according to the producer, it will provide the increased readiness of systems without the organization of clusters. Also users can create the pool of resources presenting at once several servers of management in such form which allows to redistribute loading. Among other changes in Operations Manager 2012, it is possible to mention the new console of transactions and the new web console.