science

System Center Operations Manager

System Center Operations Manager is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand System Center Operations Manager rather than just read about it. In short: System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) is a cross-platform data center monitoring system for operating systems and hypervisors. It uses a single interface that shows state, health, and performance information of computer systems.

Key takeaways

System Center Operations Manager belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect System Center Operations Manager to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of System Center Operations Manager from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) is a cross-platform data center monitoring system for operating systems and hypervisors. It uses a single interface that shows state, health, and performance information of computer systems. It also provides alerts generated according to some availability, performance, configuration, or security situation being identified. It works with Microsoft Windows Server and Unix-based hosts.

History

The product began as a network management system called SeNTry ELM, which was developed by the British company Serverware Group plc. In June 1998 the intellectual property rights were bought by Mission Critical Software, Inc. who renamed the product Enterprise Event Manager. Mission Critical undertook a complete rewrite of the product, naming the new version OnePoint Operations Manager (OOM). Mission Critical Software merged with NetIQ in early 2000, and sold the rights of the product to Microsoft in October 2000. It was later renamed into Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) - in 2003, Microsoft began work on the next version of MOM: It was called Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 and was released in August 2004. Service Pack 1 for MOM 2005 was released in July 2005 with support for Windows 2003 Service Pack 1 and SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 4. It was also required to support SQL Server 2005 for the operational and reporting database components. The development for the next version—at this time its codename was “MOM V3”—began in 2005. Microsoft renamed the product System Center Operations Manager and released System Center Operations Manager 2007 in March 2007. System Center Operations Manager 2007 was designed from a fresh code base, and although sharing similarities to Microsoft Operations Manager, is not an upgrade from the previous versions.

2009 In May 2009 System Center Operations Manager 2007 had a so-called “R2” release - the general enhancement was cross platform support for UNIX and Linux servers. Instead of publishing individual service packs, bug fixes to the product after System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 were released in the form of so-called cumulative updates (CUs).

Central concepts

The basic idea is to place a piece of software, an agent, on the computer to be monitored. The agent watches several sources on that computer, including the Windows Event Log, for specific events or alerts generated by the applications executing on the monitored computer. Upon alert occurrence and detection, the agent forwards the alert to a central SCOM server. This SCOM server application maintains a database that includes a history of alerts. The SCOM server applies filtering rules to alerts as they arrive; a rule can trigger some notification to a human, such as an e-mail or a pager message, generate a network support ticket, or trigger some other workflow intended to correct the cause of the alert in an appropriate manner. SCOM uses the term management pack to refer to a set of filtering rules specific to some monitored application. While Microsoft and other software vendors make management packages available for their products, SCOM also provides for authoring custom management packs. While an administrator role is needed to install agents, configure monitored computers and create management packs, rights to simply view the list of recent alerts can be given to any valid user account. Several SCOM servers can be aggregated together to monitor multiple networks across logical Windows domain and physical network boundaries. In previous versions of Operations Manager, a web service was employed to connect several separately-managed groups to a central location. As of Operations Manager 2007, a web service is no longer used. Rather, a direct TCP connection is used, making use of port 5723 for these communications.

Integration with Microsoft Azure To monitor servers which are running at Microsofts Cloud Infrastructure Azure it is possible to enable Log Analytics Data Sources which are collecting and sending their data to on premises SCOM Management Servers. In November 2020 Microsoft announced the plan to make SCOM a fully cloud managed Instance at their Azure Environment, Codename was "Aquila".

The Command Shell Since Operations Manager 2007 the product includes an extensible command line interface called The Command Shell, which is a customized instance of the Windows PowerShell that provides interactive and script-based access to Operations Manager data and operations.

Management Pack SCOM can be extended by importing management packs (MPs) which define how SCOM monitors systems. By default, SCOM only monitors basic OS-related services, but new MPs can be imported to monitor services such as SQL servers, SharePoint, Apache, Tomcat, VMware and SUSE Linux. Many Microsoft products have MPs that are released with them, and many non-Microsoft software companies write MPs for their own products as well. Whilst a fair amount of IT infrastructure is monitored using currently available MPs, new MPs can be created by end-users in order to monitor what is not already covered. Management Pack creation is possible with the System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Resource Kit, Visual Studio with Authoring Extensions and Visio MP Designer.

Versions

See also Microsoft System Center Official SCOM Build Version List System Center Configuration Manager System Center Data Protection Manager System Center Virtual Machine Manager Microsoft Servers Oracle Enterprise Manager IBM Director

References

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with System Center Operations Manager

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what System Center Operations Manager claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to System Center Operations Manager before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about System Center Operations Manager ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of System Center Operations Manager

In research: System Center Operations Manager appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses System Center Operations Manager in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: System Center Operations Manager is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Information technology management, Windows Server System, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for System Center Operations Manager outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study System Center Operations Manager in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what System Center Operations Manager means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain System Center Operations Manager out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is System Center Operations Manager in simple terms?

Why does System Center Operations Manager matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study System Center Operations Manager?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on System Center Operations Manager.