Discovering Servers and Installing MOM Agents
After you've completed the MOM server setup, you need to deploy the MOM agents on the servers you want to manage. MOM's Agent Manager uses Managed Computer Rules (MCRs), which are based on your domain and computer names, to discover computers in your environment.
If you have a good computer naming scheme in place that specifies a server's location or function, such as NYCEXBE01 or NAEASTDC01, you can use a small set of rules to discover the machines that you need to manage. If you don't have a good naming scheme, you can use the domain and computer name with wild- cards; however, MOM might discover a lot more computers than you want to manage. In this case, you'll need to craft more rules to narrow the field to only the computers that you need to manage. To see a list of the discovered computers, right-click Agent Manager in the MOM management console, select Properties, and go to the Managed Computers tab. This tab also displays the status of agent installation on the discovered servers.
Agent Manager uses an automatic or approval-based process to install agents on the discovered machines. If you choose the automatic process, Agent Manager installs the agents on all the discovered machines during the next scanning cycle. If you select the approval-based option, the tool lists the discovered computers in the \configuration\pending installation folder so that you can individually approve them for agent installation. If Agent Manager discovers more computers than you expected, keep Agent Install set to Require Approval so that MOM will install the agents only on the computers that you want to manage. After MOM installs the agents on a computer, the agents follow the processing rules defined for the computer's group to send information from the computer to the MOM server.
Grouping Computers with Formulas
MOM uses computer group formulas to categorize computers by function (e.g., SQL Server machines). Organizing computers into functional groups lets you apply a set of function-specific processing rules to a subset of your managed-computer group. The formulas that MOM uses to group computers are based on computer attributes; MOM's base and application management packs identify most of these formulas and attributes.
To view the default groups and formulas for the MOM management packs you've installed, expand Rules in the MOM management console, click Computer Groups, and right-click a computer group such as MS SQL Server 2000. In the Properties dialog box, select the Formula tab to see the formula and the attributes that this group uses. The formula that Figure 3 shows groups together all the computers that are running SQL Server 2000 and that aren't running Windows NT Server 4.0. The formula is based on the attribute SQL Server Current Version, which is based on the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\MSSQLServer\CurrentVersion\CurrentVersion registry subkey, which is present on SQL Server machines.
Your environment might require that you divide a large computer group into several subgroups—for example, splitting a large Exchange server group into Front End, Back End, Mailbox, and Public Folder server groups. To do so, you can create new computer attributes and use them in computer group formulas. Typically, you base new computer attributes on unique registry values. If the registry values you need aren't present, you can create them on the computers that you want to manage as a separate group.
Database Management
MOM stores the data it collects about your computers in the MOM database, which is a SQL Server database. The database's default size is 500MB. You'll most likely increase the size after you know how many servers you'll be managing and how many associated rules you'll be using. The white paper "Microsoft Operations Manager: Performance and Sizing" (http://www.microsoft.com/mom/techinfo/administration/perfsize.asp) can help you calculate an approximate starting size for your database.
Microsoft recommends that instead of using an automatic file-size-growth feature, you manually increase the database size because during automatic file growth, all database operations are suspended, which can keep MOM from functioning properly. You can use SQL Server Enterprise Manager to select the MOM database, open the Properties dialog box, and increase the size. Please note that you can only increase the size, not decrease it.
Microsoft doesn't recommend changing the SQL Server database tables directly or modifying the database schema. However, you can use SQL Server Query Analyzer to gather information about events, alerts, computer groups, processing rules, and MOM configuration. MOM customers frequently ask how they can get rid of events and names of computers that they no longer manage. You can use several SQL stored procedures to perform these tasks, but we recommend that you back up the database before executing them and contact Microsoft Product Support Services (PSS) for assistance. To help maintain database size, MOM SP1 adds a feature that lets you regulate the retention period for all sampled numeric data.
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