This section discusses various ways to ascertain if System Center Operations Manager 2007 is functioning properly and what to consider when modifying management packs.

The simplest way to assure that the system is up and functioning in its most basic form is to open the Operators console and view each managed computer. Each computer should have a "Last Contacted" field that indicates the last date and time that a managed computer contacted Operations Manager. If all of the computers that are under management have contacted Operations Manager within the last five minutes, the Operations Manager 2007 deployment has been completed successfully, including the installation of agents on the managed computers.

Verifying the correct distribution of rules and response to the rules requires creating the proper events on the managed computer and verifying that the event was detected. In the case that the rule contains a response, verification would also entail checking the event that was responded to. This in-depth verification is beyond the scope of this document.

Maintenance of Operations Manager is limited to making sure that Operations Manager database indexes are being re-created and that purging of old data is occurring. Operators should also verify that the Data Transformation Services (DTS) Packages are running against the Operations Manager database successfully. Most of the monitoring system will report to Operations Manager if there is a problem, so it is imperative that operators assure that Operations Manager is running and is receiving information from the servers it is managing. This is accomplished by verifying the date and time that Operations Manager last heard from the server, which is displayed in the Operators console.

Verifying the correct distribution of rules and response to the rules requires creating the proper events on the managed computer and verifying that the event was detected. In the case that the rule contains a response, verification would also entail checking the event that was responded to. This in-depth verification is beyond the scope of this document.

After you add a new server to your environment check that it has been discovered by Operations Manager and that the appropriate rules groups have been distributed to it. This is accomplished by checking the membership of the Groups(s) that this server should belong to within Operations Manager.

The configuration wizard permits the operator to configure which services will be monitored and enters that information automatically into the registry of each server, where the information is obtained by the Operations Manager management scripts. Additionally, the wizard enables easy configuration of the mail availability monitoring scripts.

When the configuration wizard is run, it optionally creates an XML file that contains the settings that were created during the run. This document may be used with a command-line interface to repeat the configuration steps. The greatest benefit of the XML file is that it may be manually edited to add a new server, including the information for new mail availability settings and services to monitor.

By default, Operations Manager 2007 performs maintenance tasks daily to maintain optimal performance of the Operations Manager database. These maintenance tasks are defined as System Rules in the Operations Manager 2007 Management Pack. For more information on maintaining the Operations Manager databases, see Operations Manager 2007 Operations Guide.

Modifying management pack components is an ongoing and critical part of managing your Hosted Messaging and Collaboration environment. However, certain changes can create additional problems if not carefully considered before being made.

• Modify Rules - If you modify a management pack provider, it changes for all rules that use it. It is important, then, to know what rules use a provider and to investigate what impact a change might make before revising it.
  
• Disable Rules - Before disabling a rule, check to see to which rule groups it belongs. Rules and child rule groups that are associated with a computer group will not automatically be disabled when you disable the parent rule group. However, if the child rule or rule group is not associated with a computer group, disabling its parent rule group will also disable it.