Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager 2007

Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager 2007 (SCOM) is an enterprise class operations management system that provides event management, proactive monitoring and alerting, reporting and trend analysis, system and application specific knowledge, and configurable task responses to proactively respond to negative trends and alerts. Management Packs are pre-configured collections of these capabilities focused on managing a specific application or hardware type, which can be easily exported and imported into other SCOM environments.

The Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate Management Pack was created to help you monitor Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate operations and provides the following features.

• Event rules to monitor all Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate generated events—All Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate generated events that appear in the Event Viewer can trigger a SCOM alert. By default, only a subset of events are pre-selected to generate alerts, but additional alerts can easily be generated by enabling additional event rules. See Windows Event messages for a list of the events.
• Performance rules for threshold violations—All Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate performance counters that appear in the Performance Monitor can generate a SCOM alert when the configured threshold is violated. Because every environment is unique, only a few performance thresholds are enabled by default. See Customizing the Management Pack for instructions on configuring the performance thresholds, and see Performance Monitor statistics for a list of the statistics.
• Performance rules for performance monitoring—A subset of Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate performance counters can be graphically monitored in the Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate performance views, accessible from the SCOM console. These statistics illustrate key metrics, such as how much memory or disk space Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate is consuming and how much data is being transmitted.
• Vendor product knowledge for alerts—Understanding why problems exist and how to fix them is an important part of operations management. The Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate Management Pack contains product knowledge for each alert, gathered from Carbonite technical support. Each alert will also provide information and links to external support.
• Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate specific views—Various Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate specific views are provided in the SCOM console.
• Alerts View—View only Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate alerts for computers with Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate installed.
• State View—View the server state for all Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate servers. You can also view the various properties of all Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate servers, including the overall server state.
• Events View—View Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate events for Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate servers.
• Performance Data View—View graphs of various performance counters for one or multiple computers, as defined in the performance rules.

Installing the Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate Management Pack

Microsoft Management Pack for Microsoft Systems Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 is required for the Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate Management Pack. To improve the operation of the Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate Management Pack, you should have the OpsMgr 2007 MOM 2005 Backward Compatibility MP Update installed. This Management Pack can be found on the Microsoft download site at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=655cdd06-861e-4342-99b2-8a81e09f6546&DisplayLang=en.

The Management Pack is distributed as an .xml file that is imported via the SCOM console.

1. Download the management pack zip file and unzip it, or start the Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate installation, and when the installation landing page appears, select the Get the SCOM 2007 Management Pack link.
2. From the Operations console, click Administration.
3. Right-click Management Packs and select Import Management Pack.
4. Click Add then click Add from disk.
5. Navigate to the location of the .xml file, select it, and click Open.
6. The Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate management pack does not have any dependencies. When you see the green checkmark indicating the management pack can be imported, click Install.
7. Click Close when the import is complete.

See the Microsoft SCOM documentation for complete installation details.

Customizing the Management Pack

After the installation, you will have the following Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate Management Pack assets.

• Double-Take Product Version Attribute—This attribute checks the Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate product version and is used by the Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate Servers computer group.
• Double-Take Servers Group and Installation Type—This asset uses a formula and regular expression match on the Double-Take Product Version attribute to determine which servers have Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate installed.
• Double-Take Rules—Rules can be found under the Management Pack Objects section, and contains all of the rules that comprise the Management Pack. Performance Rules, Alert Rules and Event Rules are grouped together under the Rules category. (To see only Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate rules, change the scope of the Rules group and filter by Double-Take Servers Installation.)
• Double-Take views—Various views are available as previously described in Carbonite Availability and Carbonite Migrate specific views.

Except for vendor produced product knowledge, all aspects of the Management Pack can be modified by the SCOM administrator. Use the following notes as suggestions for customization, and see your SCOM documentation for complete instructions.

• Threshold configuration—Because each server environment is different, the thresholds at which alerts should be generated will be different. To enable one of the pre-existing (but disabled) performance rules, right-click a performance rule and select Properties. On the General tab, enable Performance Rule. If you want to customize the threshold trigger, modify the threshold value on the Overrides tab.
• Multi-tier alerting—Although only one performance rule is provided for each performance counter, by copying that rule and changing the alert severity and threshold values, multi-tiered alerting is possible. For example, it is possible to generate a warning alert when 1024 MB memory is used for queuing and generate an error when 512 MB is consumed. Threshold values can be modified on the Overrides tab. Alert severities can be modified on the Configuration tab, by highlighting the GenerateAlert entry and editing the XML data behind the rule. For more details, see your SCOM documentation.
• Enable additional event rules—By default, only a pre-selected group of events will generate alerts. If additional alerts are desired, enable additional Event Rules and verify the alert severity.
• Notifications—For each Alert Rule, a notification response is pre-selected and will send the applicable message to the defined Recipients and notification Subscriptions. Notification and Subscription options in SCOM do not allow for pre-defined notification groups. Therefore, it is required that the SCOM administrator create custom notification Recipients and Subscriptions. (Notification Groups previously used in MOM 2005 can be re-created in SCOM using the Subscriptions feature. For more information on Recipients and Subscriptions, refer to Operations Manager Help using the keyword Notifications.)