David Allen who is an MVP from Infront Consulting Group in the UK just completed a great video going through use of Visual Studio Authoring Extensions.  David does extensive work in management pack authoring so I’m always anxious to share out any...

It’s that time of year again!  I know it’s April when my days start getting filled up with slides and demos.  Yet another Microsoft Management Summit is upon us, and I’ll be flying off to Vegas this weekend. A little bit different for me personally...

We announced Visual Studio Authoring Extensions back at MMS last April, and it’s now become our standard tool for building complex management packs.  While we provided some basic documentation for VSAE , we’ve been lacking in a collection of exercises...

We put out an article in the TechNet Wiki and the code for a sample shape in the TechNet Gallery for creating a custom shape for the Visio Management Pack Designer.  My apologies for the delay on this since I showed a preview of this way back at...

I wanted to call everyone’s attention to the new System Center Authoring Hub on the TechNet Wiki. This is intended to provide a single location for all content related to authoring custom scenarios in System Center. We even have a vanity URL for...

Many of you may be familiar with OpsManJam which we have used for the last few years to deliver Operations Manager content such as sample management packs and whitepapers. It has served us well for that time, and I’ve used it as my primary delivery...

I just posted a variety of management pack samples into the TechNet Gallery .  These are actually samples that have been on OpsManJam for some time.  We are planning on retiring that site in the near future though since we have more effective...

We announced our new tools for building management packs in Operations Manager back at MMS but ran into some delays in making them publically available.  The wait is now over.  The Visio Management Pack Designer and Visual Studio Authoring Extensions...

At MMS 2012, Baelson Duque and I presented our new management pack authoring tools.  Visio Management Pack Designer allows you to create a complete management pack using nothing more than Visio.  Visual Studio Authoring Extensions provides a...

Took me a bit longer than expected, but I finally got the samples out that I showed at my session at MMS 2012.  There are two sample management packs here.  First is the MPAuthor Stores Sample Management Pack .  That is an update of my...

I’ve been pretty silent here on the blog in the last few weeks as I was heads down in getting through various milestones.  As we are starting to get some interesting things out there into the public though, I wanted to give everyone some updates...

In our documentation for authoring Operations Manager management packs, we regularly reference the Management Pack Development Kit , mainly the Module Type Reference that includes reference documentation for the modules that are included in the standard...

The Windows Azure Application Monitoring Management Pack allows you to specify an application running in Windows Azure and have it automatically discovered and monitored. Creating custom monitoring for particular events or performance monitors beyond...

We have a had a variety of comments about our lack of guidance on using MPSeal to seal a management pack.  I admit that we had pretty sparse information out there so the negative comments were well justified.  I just put up a new topic that...

I wanted to make a plug for a blog run by one of our application development consultants .  Walter Myers is a Principal Consultant with MCS and has been doing a significant amount of work with the Azure Management Pack.  He has some great blog...

In my session at MMS a month or so ago, I mentioned a whitepaper that was been written by our product group on designing managed applications.  I am please to announce that this paper is now available for download (either Word or PDF depending on...

One of the real challenges that we have had in the world of MP Authoring is people locating technical information that they’re looking for.  I’ve run into several situations where people have asked me a question that is answered in some article that...

Sample management pack specification now available in the OpsManJam Management Pack Library .  To everyone who attended my session at MMS 2011 last week, sorry for the delay on this one.  This is the document that I showed during that session...

The next video in the Operations Manager R2 Discovery Series is now available.  This one is on Script Discoveries and is one of the primary ones that I wanted to get to.  We have several script examples in the OpsManJam MP Library , and we scripts...

We got an article out for a new feature in Operations Manager 2007 R2 CU3 that allows you to pick up a piece of information from the body of one request and then use it to replace a parameter in other requests in a web application.  This is a very...

We have a new version of the Azure Management Pack guide available with the MP .  I typically don’t post about management pack guides here because they focus on how you use an existing MP, while we focus here on building new ones.  The Azure...

I am going to include this issue in a video in the Discovery series I’ve been putting out (Script Discoveries is in the works right now), and we’ll probably get some more detail on this in the Authoring Guide.  I wanted to write up a quick blog entry...

The Operations Manager R2 Discovery Series continues with videos on Registry Discovery and WMI Discovery .  Each video goes through the details of of the type of discovery and walks through building one for a sample application.  Next up will...

Our first video in the Operations Manager 2007 R2 Discovery series, titled How Discovery Works , is now live.  The title is pretty much self-explanatory with the video covering the high level concepts of discoveries and the basic mechanics of how...

Some of the most common questions we get in the Operations Manager 2007 authoring world are about discovery. Given the different kinds of discoveries available, the specific requirements you need to adhere to in configuring the discovery data, and the...