An updated Active Directory Monitoring Pack is available

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Five months ago, I wrote a blogpost on the latest update on the System Center Active Directory Monitoring Pack (version 6.0.7670.0).

Today, hot on the heels of the System Center 2012 release, I’m going to tell you about an update on that release. (version 6.0.7822.0)

About System Center Operations Manager

With Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) you can leave the monitoring and alerting to software in a confident, fast and robust way. Before Operations Manager became a part of the System Center family, it was known as Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM).

System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) comes with the basic set of monitoring tools to monitor Windows Servers. These basic monitoring capabilities can be extended using Monitoring Packs for specific Server Roles and Server Products. Of course, monitoring is of little use in big environments with repeating errors, so System Center Operations Manager is designed to work together with the other members of the System Center family of products, like System Center Configuration Manager (formerly known as SMS Server) and System Center Orchestrator (formerly known as Opalis).

About the Active Directory Monitoring Pack

Active Directory Domain Services is a Server Role in Windows Server and Microsoft has deemed it fit to have its own Monitoring Pack. Even more, Microsoft has dedicated valuable time to actively maintain the Monitoring Pack for Active Directory.

 

What’s new in this release?

The accompanying guide (OM2007_NP_AD2008.doc) lists the following changes for version 6.0.7822.0:

  • Corrected some Publisher names (for example, changed from PublisherName=KDC to PublisherName=Microsoft-Windows-Kerberos-Key-Distribution-Center).
  • Updated rules to generate Alerts and not only go to the Event Viewer.
  • Removed unnecessary check for Event Source Name for all NTDS rules (for example, removed EventSourceName=”NTDS General”).
  • Corrected event parameter validation.
  • Updated queries to search for correct event IDs.
  • Fixed spelling errors.
  • Added missing descriptions to rules.
  • Fixed problems with Health Monitoring scripts.
  • Removed user name checks from Userenv rules.

System Center 2012

Since Management Packs and Monitoring Packs (both referred to as MPs) are compatible between System Center Operations Manager 2007 and System Center 2012, you’re good to go at that front, too.

 

Call to action

The previous update to the Active Directory Monitoring Pack was a significant update that addressed a lot of issues. In this version Microsoft dots the i's and crosses the t's, removing any annoying problems you might have with version 6.0.7670.0, dated September 2011 and any workarounds in place.

Download the System Center Monitoring Pack for Active Directory (AD)

Marnix Wolf, a fellow Dutch MVP gives the advice not to import the functionality of the Microsoft.Windows.Server.AD.ClientMonitoring MP since it adds a lot of complexity. Many times, the AD MP without monitoring from the client perspective already adds enough insight about the health state of an Active Directory environment.

Further reading

Updated Active Directory Management Pack Released – version 6.0.7822.0
March 2012 revision of the Monitoring Pack for Active Directory released
Active Directory MP version 6.0.7822.0 Released
New AD management pack released
Updated MP: Active Directory MP, version 6.0.7822.0

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