Terminology

The table below provides Microsoft® Operations Manager (MOM) 2000 terms and their equivalent terms for MOM 2005.

Deployment

Improvements in MOM 2005 deployment include simpler, MSI-based installation, an all-new Deployment Planning Wizard, a Prerequisite Checker, and greater server management capacity.

MSI-based Deployment

Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 uses Windows Installer 2.0 to guide you through the installation process and make sure that all the files and settings are properly installed on your system. This means that deploying MOM 2005 is easier, simpler and faster than with previous versions.

Prerequisite Checker

Before you install a MOM component on a computer, the Prerequisite Checker ensures that the computer meets all the requirements for the MOM component that you are installing.

Capacity

In MOM 2005, several capacity categories have been increased to extend MOM monitoring capability. The following table compares MOM 2000, MOM 2000 SP1, and MOM 2005 management capacity.

  Note   

In MOM 2005 the term “MOM Management Server” replaces “DCAM.”

Operator Console

The new MOM Operator console is designed in response to feedback provided by MOM customers. The console provides access to diverse and rich operations information, such as alerts, events, performance data, and topology diagrams.

Alerts View

The Alerts view provides you with a rich discovery and resolution experience. You can sort by any column; filter by any computer group or region; and rearrange, add, or delete columns as required. You can see the details for any alert in the same window by selecting the alert. From there, you can see the Properties, Custom Properties, Knowledge Base, Events, and History of the alert by clicking a link.

Diagram View

MOM 2005 provides a variety of topology diagrams that display computers and their relationships. These diagrams are dynamic and discovered by the MOM Management Packs. The status of each node in your topology, navigation to other views, and launching of context-sensitive actions is supported by the Diagram view.

State View

This new view provides the state of any computer, service, or MOM component. Rather than waiting for an alert to be raised, you can view the summary state for these entities at any time.

Multi-pane View

Many System Operation Centers (SOCs) and Network Operations Centers (NOCs) prefer a multi-pane view to watch computer status, new alerts, and resolved alerts at the same time on different panes. Some service owners choose to watch selected performance views and computer status on an ongoing basis. MOM 2005 multi-pane views supports these modes of operation. Operator console navigation applies to the selected pane, as well as the Details pane.

Computer Groups View

You can view information and perform many operations, based on computer groups and nested computer groups. You can also filter this view by Management Pack, which enables you to easily find the information that you are looking for so that you can resolve issues quickly and efficiently.

Tasks

MOM 2005 provides the capability to define, export, import, and launch context-sensitive tasks and diagnostics. You can run tasks on the computer with the Operator console, the MOM Management Server, or on a managed computer. Tasks can be run against multiple targets, such as alerts, and computers.

The tasks can pick up the context from the selection in the Operator console when the task was launched. The Operator console can also pick up pre discovered data from the MOM 2005 database, which provides more focused instances for targeting tasks. Also, because actions can be disruptive, you have the final approval on running tasks against the set of selected target instances.

You can use tasks to open a Terminal Services window or run a diagnostic tool, or run fully automated tasks against a server or agent. You can run tasks immediately, or according to a schedule.

Customization

The MOM 2005 Operator console provides robust customization possibilities, allowing operators to view information and perform tasks in a manner that best suits their work requirements.

Reporting

MOM Reporting now includes automatic data warehousing and the use of Microsoft SQL Server™ Reporting Services to generate reports.

MOM Reporting Server

MOM provides built-in data transformation and management functionality, which gives you the ability to maintain historical data that you can use for analysis. Instead of running reports against the MOM database, you can easily and effectively use the MOM Reporting database for reporting. The MOM Reporting database also supports database grooming.

MOM Reporting Console

The MOM Reporting console, which is Web-based, enables you to sort data and drill-down to find the detailed information that you need. You can export report data to other formats, such as a Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet. In addition to viewing reports immediately, you can schedule report publication and distribution to subscribers.

Agent Management

The agent management improvements in MOM 2005 include faster computer discovery and agent installation, agentless monitoring, and improved management across firewalls.

Computer Discovery and Agent Installation

MOM 2000 used to rely on the Agent Manager for automated agent management. This included discovery, shallow discovery, classification into computer groups, and agent deployment. Because the Agent Manager used Remote Procedure Call (RPC), functionality was limited for managing computers across firewalls, and if the Agent Manager did not have administrative privileges to the managed computer. In these scenarios, manual intervention was required.

In MOM 2005, the Agent Manager Service no longer exists and MOM 2005 manages agents using tasksthat perform an extended set of self management activities. These activities include tasks, such as deploying agents; starting, stopping, and bouncing agents; and changing agent configuration.

In addition, the responsibility of scanning computer attributes (shallow discovery) and reporting this information is transferred to the agents. As a result, scanning and automatic classification of agents across firewalls can be done without administrative rights.

Agentless Monitoring

MOM 2005 supports status monitoring of up to 60 agentless managed computers per MOM Management Server. Agentless monitoring is limited to status monitoring.

Management Packs

The improvements in MOM 2005 for Management Packs include rule overrides, state views, topology diagram views, nested computer groups, scoped views, product connectors, and compatibility with MOM 2000 Management Packs.

Overrides

This feature allows you to override specific aspects of a rule for a single Management Server or computer group. For example, you may need to set individual capacity thresholds for two logical drives on one computer, because they are of a different size.

State Views

MOM 2005 provides to Management Packs all of the infrastructure to provide status monitoring, including a service and its subcomponent level. It also provides the apparatus to roll the status up to a computer or a computer group.

Diagram Views

When services are distributed in complex configurations, determining the root cause of a wide-spread problem is complex. It is also difficult to determine how taking action on one computer affects the infrastructure. Visual representation with hard copy diagrams is useful, but these diagrams are difficult to maintain and often out of date.

MOM 2005 provides users a variety of topological views, where the existence of computers and their relationships to other computers are automatically discovered by MOM. The status of each computer, navigation to other views, and initiating context-sensitive actions are supported from the diagram views.

Nested Groups

MOM 2000 used the concept of computer groups for organizing rules. These computer groups are dynamic and can be imported or exported with Management Packs. In MOM 2005, the idea of computer groups is extended to include nested groups. These groups can be dynamic or static, user-defined or discovered, and can have one or more parents.

The idea of the nested computer groups is broadly implemented and encompasses rules targeting, view definitions, task targeting, navigation and drill down, and scoping views for users.

Console Scopes

In many environments, groups of computers are assigned to administrators by region, business unit, or function. MOM 2005 enables an administrator to limit the view of computer groups to specific users. This enables the administrator to isolate a computer or group of computers from being accessed by unauthorized users.

MOM-to-MOM Product Connector

The MOM-to-MOM Product Connector forwards alerts and updates back and forth between two management groups, using MOM Connector Framework (MCF) as entry points for both groups. The MOM-to-MOM Product Connector can also forward discovery information.

Management Pack Compatibility

Management Packs that are created for MOM 2000 can be installed and used on any MOM 2005 Management Server. However, these Management Packs cannot take advantage of the new features in MOM 2005.

Security

The security improvements in MOM 2005 include many default enhancements that make your MOM environment safer and more robust.

Process Separation and Low-Privileged Account

MOM components run under separate security contexts and in different processes. This means that if one response fails, it does not affect other responses or the MOM service itself.

Mutual Authentication

In MOM 2005, you can configure a managed computer and the MOM Management Server to authenticate each other before sending data across the network.

Secure Communications Channel

The communication between MOM 2005 Agent and the Management Server is always encrypted and digitally signed by default, and is also authenticated (if mutual authentication is enabled). The encryption has also been enhanced and is based upon a dynamically-created key, rather than a static key. Dynamic keys make it harder to view data that is transferred between MOM components.

Block Legacy Agents

The Block Legacy Agents block MOM 2000 and MOM 2000 SP1 agents from communicating with the MOM 2005 Management Server by default. You can then use the more secure communication in MOM 2005.

MOM Service Running as Network Service

On Microsoft Windows Server® 2003, the MOM Service can run under the Network Service account. This account has lower permissions than the Local System account, and enhances the security of the MOM Service.

Custom Server-Side Responses Disabled

Custom Server-Side Responses are disabled by default. This means that responses do not automatically run when rule criteria are met on the agents.

More Secure Agent Management

Manually-installed agents are rejected by default and must be accepted to be monitored by default. This gives you much better control over where and when agents are deployed in your environment.

For more information about MOM 2005 security, see the Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Security Guide.

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Feature	MOM 2000 capacity	MOM 2000 SP1 capacity	MOM 2005 capacity
Managed computers in a Management group	1,000	2,000	3,500
Managed computers per Management Server	700	1,000	1,200
Management Servers per Management group	4	10	10
Source management groups forwarding to a MOM Destination management group   Note    In MOM 2005, Source management groupis the new name for what was a Zone management group in MOM 2000. Destination management groupreplaces Master management group.	6	10	10