Management Packs contain predefined monitoring settings that enable agents to monitor a specific service or application in Operations Manager 2007. These predefined settings include discovery information that allows Management Servers to automatically detect and begin monitoring objects, a knowledge base that contains error and troubleshooting information, alerts, and reports.

Some Management Packs are imported automatically when Operations Manager is installed These Management Packs contain basic settings that Operations Manager uses. Other Management Packs are designed to monitor specific applications and can be obtained from the vendor that created the application. If you have an application that does not have a Management Pack, you can use the tools in Operations Manager to create monitoring settings or to create your own Management Pack for the application.

In Operations Manager 2007, Management Pack files are XML files that can have either an .mp or an .xml extension and contain monitoring settings for applications and services. After a Management Pack is imported into an Operations Manager 2007 Management Server, it immediately begins monitoring objects based on default configurations and thresholds that are already set by the author of the Management Pack.

The defined schema file for Operations Manager 2007 Management Packs is MPSchema.xsd. The .mp files are sealed Management Packs, and Management Pack files with the .xml extension are not. To learn more about sealed Management Packs, see Management Pack Formats.

One of the Management Packs that is imported as part of the Operations Manager 2007 installation is the Default Management Pack. By default, when you create a Management Pack object such as a monitor, alert, or rule, it is saved to the Default Management Pack. You can choose to save the monitoring object to another Management Pack in the wizard that steps you through the creation of the monitoring object. In addition, when you create an override to customize a default setting in a sealed Management Pack, that override is saved to the Default Management Pack by default.

Several Management Packs are imported as part of the Operations Manager 2007 installation process. These Management Packs are referred to as "libraries," because they provide a foundation of object types on which many other Management Packs depend. If your Management Pack references other Management Packs, you must first import all referenced Management Packs before you can import your Management Pack.

You can obtain Management Pack files either from the vendor of the Management Pack or from the Microsoft Management Pack Catalog.

The default settings and thresholds contained in a Management Pack reflect the author's definition of a healthy state for the application, service, or hardware device that you are monitoring. These settings provide a starting point for administrators, who can then make customizations using overrides or by creating additional Management Pack elements such as rules and monitors.

Sealed Management Pack files are formatted so that you cannot make changes to them. This means that any customizations you create are not saved to the original Management Pack. Instead, customizations are saved, by default, to the Default Management Pack.

By default, when a Management Pack is imported, the monitoring settings contained within the Management Pack are applied to all managed computers within the management group. If you customize the settings of a Management Pack, you can apply these customizations to other management groups. To do this, you must first export the customized settings to a Management Pack file. This Management Pack is dependent on the original vendor's Management Pack and can be imported only to management groups that have the original vendor's Management Pack.

The settings imported from a Management Pack file are saved to the Operations Manager database and can be accessed through the Operations Console. When you no longer need these settings, you can delete the Management Pack file and all associated settings in Operations Manager 2007 by using the Delete action for that Management Pack.