Subject matter experts create Operations Manager management packs so that Operations Manager will provide you with useful information about a particular application, service, role, or device. However, while the experts who created the management pack know a large amount about the subject of the management pack, they don’t know anything about your specific private cloud environment. Importing the management pack is only the first part of the management pack’s lifecycle. You also need to test, tune, and alter each management pack so that it provides you with the information that you actually need to know to perform your job.
More Info: Management Pack Lifecycle
You can learn more about the management pack lifecycle at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh212732.aspx.
Microsoft describes the management pack lifecycle in the following manner:
- Review and evaluate in pre-production environment Before deploying a management pack into your organization’s production environment, you should evaluate the management pack in a test or development environment.
- Tune the management pack settings Use overrides to tune the management pack. Save these overrides in a separate unsealed management pack.
- Deploy the management packs into production environment When you do this, you’ll also import the separate, unsealed management packs that contained the overrides that you created in your test or development environment.
- Maintain the management pack Once the management pack has been deployed, you may still need to perform additional tuning. The following changes in circumstances should lead you to retune the management pack:
- Changing business needs Your organizational requirements might change in terms of the monitoring of the object that is the subject of the management pack. This may necessitate reevaluating how the management pack has been tuned.
- The environment changes For example, there is a change in computer hardware, operating system, or virtual machine configuration that impacts the monitored object.
- Additional applications You add a new application to the environment that interacts with the monitored object in a substantive way.
- Application upgrade You should tune the management pack if the management pack monitors an application that you’ve upgraded, or to which you’ve applied a service pack.
- Updated management pack If the vendor releases an updated version of the management pack, you may need to begin the process again. Management pack upgrades provide a great example as to why you should document the management pack tuning process. If you’ve created documentation explaining how you’ve tuned the management pack, you’ll be able to refer to it when tuning a new version of the management pack.
Overrides
When you first import a management pack, you may find that while it tells you many useful things about the product, service, device, or object that you should know, it also tells you many things about the product, service, device, or object that you aren’t interested in. Overrides allow you to alter the settings of a rule or a monitor in a sealed management pack without changing the rule or monitor itself.
To configure an override for a rule, perform the following steps:
1. In the Authoring workspace of the Operations Manager console, expand Management Pack Objects, and click the Rules node.
2. Locate the rule for which you want to create the override. Figure 1 shows a rule named MSSQL 2012: Logins Per Second.
FIGURE 1 Management pack rules
3. Right-click the rule, and click Properties. On the Overrides tab, shown in Figure 2, click Disable to disable the rule, or click Override to change the parameters of the rule.
FIGURE 2 Configure overrides
4. When you click Override, you’ll be asked to choose between all objects of the class that the override applies to, to a group, to a specific object of the class, or for all objects of another class. If you only wanted to configure the override on logins per second for one SQL Server instance, you’d choose the Specific Object Of The Class option.
5. On the Override Properties dialog box, you then select the parameter name that you want to override, provide a new override value, select the option to enforce the override, and select an unsealed management pack in which to store the override. You should create a management pack to store for overrides of a specific management pack, otherwise it will be stored in the default management pack. Figure 3 shows that the Frequency parameter of the MSSQL 2012: Logins Per Second rule has been altered to 500.
FIGURE 3 Override properties
To configure an override for a monitor, perform the following steps:
1. In the Authoring workspace of the Operations Manager console, expand Management Pack Objects, and click the Monitors node.
2. Select the monitor that you want to configure the override for. Figure 4 shows the Server Resources monitor in the Exchange Server Management pack.
FIGURE 4 Monitors
3. Right-click the monitor that you want to configure the override for, and click Properties.
4. On the Overrides tab, shown in Figure 5, click the Monitor that you wish to configure the override for, and click Override. Click Disable if you want to disable the monitor instead.
FIGURE 5 Monitor overrides
5. When you click Override, you’ll be given the option of creating an override for all objects in the class, for a group, for a specific object, or for objects in another class. If you only want to configure an override for a specific monitored object, rather than all objects the monitor is used with, select Specific Object. You can only select a specific object if Operations Manager already monitors that object.
6. On the Override Properties dialog box, select the parameter that you want to modify, set the Override value, ensure that the Enforced checkbox is selected, and choose the unsealed management pack in which to store the override. For example, in Figure 6, the Alert Priority is set to Medium, from Low.
FIGURE 6 Override options
More Info: Overrides
You can learn more about Operations Manager management pack overrides at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh212869.aspx.
Tuning management packs
Tuning a management pack is the process of adjusting what the management pack is telling you so it provides you with the information that you want to know, rather than the information that the management pack authors think you need to know. When tuning management packs, you should consult with the service owner, subject matter experts, and the operations team members who are responsible for monitoring and responding to alerts.
You can use the following approach when tuning management packs:
- Start by tuning the highest severity alerts first, and then work through towards the lowest.
- Remember that rules generate alerts that do not auto-close when the issue that caused the alert is resolved. Alerts generated by monitors close, then the issue is fixed.
- Evaluate how actionable an alert is. Actionable alerts are those where you are informed what event occurred to trigger the alert, and where there are clear steps to resolve the cause of the alert. Consider disabling alerts for rules where no action is required.
- Evaluate the validity of the alert. Some alerts will inform you that they were triggered by a particular event, such as a service failing. If you investigate and find that the service that supposedly triggered the alert hasn’t failed, assess whether you should disable the alert.
- Evaluate whether multiple alerts are informing you about the same issue. You can suppress those alerts that are providing you with duplicate notification about the same issue.
- Microsoft provides the following recommendations for management pack tuning:
- Only import a single management pack at a time. This gives you a chance to concentrate on tuning one management pack. Tuning more than one management pack concurrently consumes substantially more time.
- Review alerts reported for servers monitored by the newly imported management pack. Use the Alerts and Most Common Alerts reports to determine which alerts are being created the most often, and use this as a starting point for tuning.
- Disable monitors or rules when you determine that you don’t need to be notified about a particular issue.
- Alter the threshold of the monitor generating the alert if you want the underlying issue to be monitored, but not at the sensitivity at which the current monitor is configured.
- Save overrides to an unsealed management pack that uses the name ManagementPack_Overrides. For example, call the management pack that stores the overrides for the Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 management pack, Microsoft Exchange Server 2013_Overrides. This simplifies the process of keeping track of overrides.
More Info: Management Pack Tuning
You can learn more about tuning Operations Manager management packs at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh230704.aspx.
Exporting management packs
Exporting a management pack allows you to create a backup of that management pack. This can be useful for management packs that store overrides and customizations as exporting that management pack allows you to save all of the overrides and customizations that you configured. This allows you to then import the custom unsealed management pack to a management server in another management group so that you can use the overrides and customizations with the sealed management pack in that management group. For example, you might spend time tuning a new sealed management pack in a development-monitoring environment before introducing it into a production-monitoring environment. Prior to importing the management pack into the production environment, you would export the customizations into a separate unsealed management pack, importing both the sealed and unsealed management pack.
If you are using the Operations Manager console, you’re only able to export unsealed management packs. If necessary, you can export a sealed management pack using the Export-SCOMManagementPack Windows PowerShell cmdlet, though it is usually simpler to reimport the sealed management pack from the location from which you originally obtained it.
More Info: Exporting Management Packs
You can learn more about exporting management packs at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh320149.aspx.
