So I have finally found some free time to devote to updating my blog this evening.  Today as I was giving a presentation at my customer regarding Management Pack Lifecycle Management, they approached me with some good questions on the topic.  Specifically around "how do I verify 1) that the MP imported successfully, and 2) that once the Management Pack is imported, the agent actually received the rules and is running them?" 

The first question is pretty straight foward, the import wizard will inform you of success or failure immediately.  If that is not enough to satisfy the most anal individuals, then if it imported successfully go into the Operations Console and under the Administration view, select the Management Pack node and verify the MP is listed.  And if that is not enough, then run the pre-canned report "Microsoft ODR Report Library\Management Packs."   That will triple verify the MP is installed in the MG.  Now onto the second part, validation of agent recieving rules which are:

  1. Run the Effective Configuration Viewer Reskit tool for Operations Manager 2007, which can be downloaded from here - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=A9DB4DCA-6716-478D-89B9-42F27EBC76A8&displaylang=en.  Once you install it on your MS, RMS, or desktop with the Operations Console, you can execute it and select an object, such as a computer, and then view a list of monitors and rules.  In my testing of this tool thus far, you are not going to see the same results as you would if you ran the task I highlight in option 2.  I am still playing with this to understand why this is, so bear with me because I just started to sink my teeth into this Reskit tool. 
  2. From the Operations Console, select the Monitoring view and target the Agent Health Service (this can be accomplished a couple of different ways, but the default OOBE is expand Operations Manager\Agent node in the left pane, and select the Active Alerts dashboard view).  Highlight an agent and select the Task - Show Running Rules and Monitors for this Health Service.  When you execute it and it displays the results, take note in the Task Output the tag "Count" as this will inform you as to how many are actually running against the agent.  This is a bit crude, but effective as a "quick and dirty" approach.
  3. From the Command Shell, run a script provided by my colleague Boris Yanushpolsky that retrieves rules and monitors for a specific target, found here - http://blogs.msdn.com/boris_yanushpolsky/archive/2007/11/21/retrieving-rules-and-monitors-targeted-to-a-particular-class-target.aspx.

I am actually thinking of seeing if I can create a Report that would provide you with this information also.  If  can find the time in the very near future, I just may see if I can knock it out.