Microsoft Certified Consultants Microsoft Operations Manager Expertise: Design, Support, Maintenance
For small companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, San Jose, or anywhere in the U.S., Progent's Microsoft-authorized consultants offer computer assistance and professional consulting support for the whole family of Microsoft .NET Enterprise Servers, Windows Server 2003, and Microsoft Windows 2000 Server. Progent's planning, integration, optimization, and consulting services cover system design, deployment, and management help for
project management and documentation, local and off-site
technical support and system diagnosis,
Help Desk Outsourcing Support, certified
security consulting, and full-service
outsourcing.
What Is Microsoft Operations Manager?
Microsoft Operations Manager 2007 is an advanced network management software platform that monitors the reliability, throughput, and safety of your information network by automatically identifying problems and tendencies taking place on critical computers throughout your entire environment.
Microsoft Operations Manager operates by continually scanning event logs from designated servers, then filtering, organizing, and analyzing these network events according to an extensive built-in knowledge base. When System Center Operations Manager detects problems or a potentially damaging tendency, it can execute special repair scripts or generate alarms to notify designated IT personnel. For example, MS Operations Manager can proactively take off line a compromised server to stop the spread of a discovered virus. MS Operations Manager also produces trend data so you can monitor the robustness of your IT system and ensure that trouble warnings have been appropriately resolved.
Operations Manager 2007 features important enhancements over Operations Manager 2005 such as informative new reports and an easy to customize reporting environment, plus minimization of false warnings via advanced self-tuning monitoring parameters that learn and adadpt warning triggers to the ordinary production usage patterns of applications and systems. Microsoft Operations Manager 2007 also introduces model-based management. By defining the network environment as models, MS Operations Manager 2007 can better understand the relationships between the distributed applications and hardware that represent your IT services. These models, defined in the System Definition Model (SDM) that is the foundation for the standard Services Modeling Language, permit more granular detection of network components and the power to monitor not only the servers but the entire totality of service as a unique object.
MS Operations Manager Management Packs
Management Packs are the building blocks which carry Operations Manager management capabilities to OS platforms, applications, and other technology components. A Management Pack includes field-tested expertise to find, monitor, analyze, report on, and repair problems for a specified technology component. Management Packs include health models based on the Systems Definition Model (SDM) to analyze the efficiency, reliability, set up and protection inputs, as well as the health of associated components, to decide the general status of components. Operations Manager Management Packs are designed for Microsoft and other OS platforms, software products, and devices.
Microsoft provides System Center Operations Manager MPs for over 60 Microsoft products and software components. Microsoft's Management Packs are written by the same teams who built the associated products so the expertise and knowledge incorporated is derived from the most expert authority. All of the Microsoft MPs are included for licensed users of System Center Operations Manager 2007. Management Packs provided Microsoft include:
Microsoft Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol Service
Microsoft Message Queuing
MS Windows Domain Name Server (DNS) Service
File Replication Services 2003
Windows Internet Name Services (WINS) 2003
Microsoft Routing and Remote Access
Microsoft SNA Server
Microsoft MSDTC
Terminal Services
Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS)
Site Server
Application Center 2000
Microsoft Proxy Server
3rd-party and Custom MS Operations Manager 2007 Management Packs
Operations Manager 2007 MPs for many third party products including Linux, Oracle, and SAP, and for a variety of server hardware, are produced and available from Microsoft Partners. There are more than one hundred Microsoft Partner Management Packs covering most networking technologies utilized by most businesses.
Microsoft provides a number of tools creating or customizing Management Packs for Operations Manager 2007. Microsoft's Distributed Application Designer is a graphical tool for assisting IT administrators to produce performance profiles and MPs for their IT Services. The Management Pack Authoring Console is a GUI-based utility designed to assist IT administrators and programmers to build MPs for their custom business programs and other network components. The Operations Manager 2007 Software Development Kit (SDK) provides programming APIs so developers can more thoroughly integrate with and automate Operations Manager 2007.
Benefits of MOM
Microsoft Operations Manager improves the reliability of business-critical applications by automatically identifying and helping to resolve trouble spots before they are able to crash a computer. For an example of how MS Operations Manager has helped a Northern California business, read the
MS Operations Manager Case Study.
MS Operations Manager can optimize system throughput by checking predefined performance thresholds and usage trends on critical servers, allowing IT support personnel to be more proactive in deploying performance-boosting products and to address issues before they result in severe system bottlenecks.
MS Operations Manager reduces support staffing expenses by streamlining the tasks of network management. Because MS Operations Manager can efficiently monitor and organize massive amounts of information gathered from many servers, fewer network managers are required to oversee operations. Also, the ability of MOM to act automatically in response to alerts makes it possible to create expert scripts that can take complex corrective actions which would otherwise require the hands-on intervention of technical staff.
By automatically generating alerts and sending them via e-mail or pagers to predetermined IT personnel, Microsoft Operations Manager makes it simpler for support organizations to meet service level agreements. MS Operations Manager's database helps deal with problems faster, and MS Operations Manager's reports make sure that trouble tickets don't fall through the cracks. Automatic 24x7 monitoring and alert generation also allows businesses to utilize their IT staff more effectively so that more work can be accomplished without sacrificing system support.
In general, MS Operations Manager gives small and midsize businesses the advantages of non-stop system monitoring plus expertise in troubleshooting without being required to manage a large, full-time IT group.
How Progent Can Show You How to Get the Most from Microsoft Operations Manager
Configuring Microsoft Operations Manager's, sophisticated monitoring software can be a challenge. With over six years of background with the NetIQ technology upon which System Center Operations Manager is based, Progent's network support engineers can assist you to select appropriate Operations Manager components, install and set up Microsoft Operations Manager, and create specialized rules, procedures, reports, and alarms for your business. Progent can also document Microsoft Operations Manager's application monitoring policies and protocols.
For technical issues detected by Operations Manager, you can outsource trouble tickets to Progent's Microsoft-qualified support team.
With years of IT support experience, these IT professionals possess the know-how to react efficiently to the data generated by Operations Manager to keep business-critical systems operating smoothly. By examining trend data and reacting efficiently to alerts, Progent can eliminate incipient problems before they cause system failure and repair urgent problems immediately after they appear. In the majority of instances, Progent can solve problems remotely, saving time and money. For serious problems requiring onsite service, Progent can promptly send a service consultant to the site of any small company in Northern California or in major locations throughout the U.S..
Progent's large team of consulting professionals makes it possible, if required, to solve challenging problems by utilizing the skills to some of the San Francisco Bay Area's most knowledgeable computer consultants.
To learn additional information about Microsoft Operations Manager and how Progent can help your small or midsize company receive enterprise-class IT management by adopting this revolutionary technology, pick one of these topics:
If you wish to get in touch with Progent about professional help for Operations Manager, phone 1-800-993-9400 or email operations-manager-help@progent.com.
