Recently I have been engrossed in the development of a custom Management Pack for both Active Directory and also Windows Server Operating System.  I decided to undertake this endeavor for a couple of reasons:

  1. Learn to develop a MP on Operations Manager
  2. Focus on monitoring scenarios that are not provided with the current releases.  Based on experience with customers, and also on what we review with customers during a health check.

So the first custom MP I worked on was Active Directory.  I called it the "Extended Active Directory Management Pack" because it augments the existing Management Pack by monitoring for such things as:

  • Monitor Domain Name System (DNS), which the default rules that were in the MOM 2005 MP did get carried over during the conversion to the Operations Manager version of the MP. (It will be for the next release of the ADMP however, tentatively scheduled for release 2nd half of 2008).
  • Monitor the Windows Time Service (W32Time) for time synchronization issues with authoritative time source.
  • Monitor for clients not authenticating against a local domain controller, indicating site boundaries are not properly defined or scoped.
  • Monitor for expensive or inefficient LDAP queries performed against a DC (either summary or detailed events).
  • Monitor for FRS related events that affect the health and availability of the SYSVOL shared directory and its replication on a domain controller.
  • Monitor for specific performance characteristics of a domain controller with respect to Free System Page Table Entries and Database Name Cache hit rate.
  • Includes two Tasks to remotely shutdown and reboot of a domain controller from within the Operations Console.

The Windows Server Operating System Management Pack monitors for one specific event on a Windows Server 2003 Member Server:

  • Monitors for the demotion of a domain controller to a Windows member server (because of the model that Operations Manager uses, if a server role changes, then rediscovery will identify those changes and under this situation, the new alert for DC Demotion by the ADMP will be deleted shortly after it is created.  Thereby causing confusion and lack of effective audit trail).
  • Includes two Tasks to remotely shutdown and reboot of a domain controller from within the Operations Console

Each Management Pack is sealed and provided in a ZIP file along with a Deployment Guide and can be downloaded from the link accompanying this entry.  The requirements for using these Management Packs are simple, you need to be running Operations Manager 2007 RC SP1.

Please feel free to provide your feedback, if you find these rule to be beneficial and relevant, and if you have any suggestions for the next version I intend on developing shortly.