You can use the Import Management Packs wizard to import management packs either from a local or network disk or directly from the management pack catalog on the Web. You can browse the management pack catalog directly from the wizard. The wizard has views for all management packs in the catalog, updates for management packs that you have imported, all management packs that have been released in the past three months, or all management packs that have been released in the past six months. After you select the management packs that you want to import from the Web, the wizard downloads, unpacks, and imports the management packs for you. If you do not want to import them directly from the catalog, you can download them manually and then import them later.

Operations Manager 2007 R2 provides a template you can use to easily create process monitors. The monitor watches the running-processes list on a given computer or on groups that you define. This template creates a monitor that you can use to watch groups for processes that you do not want to be running and to gather performance and status data for processes that you expect to be running. The following are some examples of the different parameters and events that you can monitor:

• A minimum number of wanted processes are running. For example, an IIS Web site has at least one w3wp.exe process that is running.
  
  
• The number of identified processes that are concurrently running does not exceed a limit. For example, you might not want more than four instances of w3wp.exe running in a given IIS Web site.
  
  
• Performance and status data that are collected on a running process, either as a group or individually. For example, you might want to measure the load on an IIS Web site. To make this measurement, you might want the SUM Memory\Private Working Set performance counter from IISAdmin.exe and all w3wp.exe processes to be on a given computer.
  
  

In previous versions of the Exchange 2007 management pack, it was necessary to configure the synthetic client transactions against OWA, ActiveSync, Web Services POP3 and IMAP manually by setting overrides. In Operations Manager 2007 R2, this configuration is done in the new Exchange 2007 Client Access Server Monitoring management pack template.

In previous versions of the Exchange 2007 management pack, it was necessary to configure the monitoring of mail flow in an Exchange organization, via synthetic transactions, manually by configuring overrides. In Operations Manager 2007 R2, this configuration is done in the new Exchange 2007 Intra-organizational Mail Flow management pack template. In the configuration of this template, you can define your source mailbox servers, where the test e-mail is sent from, target mailbox servers where the test e-mail is sent to, the frequency of test e-mails, and the time out parameters.

The OLE DB management pack template gives you a way to type or paste in a custom query to be run against the remote OLE DB data source.

In Operations Manager 2007 R2 you can discover, monitor, and manage UNIX-based and Linux-based computers by using the same interface and tools that you use to manage your Windows-based computers. Some of the components are:

• The Computer and Device Management Wizard (the discovery wizard), which performs UNIX and Linux discovery in addition to Windows discovery and Network Device discovery
  
  
• Management packs for monitoring:
  
  
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 and 10, SP1
    
    
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 and 5
    
    
  • Solaris 8 for SPARC, 9 for SPARC and 10 for SPARC and x86
    
    
  • HP-UX 11iv2 for PA-RISC and IA64 and 11iv3 for PA-RISC and IA64
    
    
  • and AIX 5.3 for PowerPC and 6.1 for PowerPC
    
    
• The capability to provide different sets of credentials for remote monitoring of UNIX-based and LINUX-based computers
  
  
• A single UNIX/Linux Server State view for monitoring all your UNIX-based and LINUX based-computers
  
  

Operations Manager 2007 R2 provides Service Level Tracking for distributed applications. This tracking is done by defining Service Level Objectives (SLOs) in the Authoring space. These objectives allow you to classify monitors and rules that affect the availability and performance of Distributed Applications.

The Visio exports that you get from Operations Manager 2007 R2 now include the metadata that is necessary for future versions of Visio and Sharepoint to query the Operations database and update the status of exported objects in the diagram.

The Health Explorer has been added to the Web console.

You can install the Operations Manager 2007 R2 databases on SQL Server 2008.

When you create a new monitor that will generate an alert, you can dynamically choose the XPath elements that are required to customize the Alert Description field with context-sensitive data. For example you can choose XPath elements, such as $Data/Context… or $Target/Property .

When you create a dashboard view, you add other views to the dashboard view in each pane of the dashboard view. Operations Manager 2007 R2 provides a search tool that you can use to find the views you want quickly. In addition, the search also includes views that you have created in My Workspace.

You can view all rule and monitor overrides in the overrides summary view. The overrides summary view can be used for both sealed and unsealed management packs. You can customize this view by using multiple column headers to group items.

The process of placing a computer and all its related objects into maintenance mode has been streamlined in the following ways:

• Management pack authors can specify in the management pack what should be included in an alert and how it is formed when a monitor comes out of maintenance mode.
  
  
• Alerts are generated on HealthService heartbeat failures after exiting out of maintenance mode.
  
  
• You can put a whole computer into Maintenance mode. This automatically puts the Health Service and the associated Health Service watcher into maintenance mode, which suppresses all alerts on that computer.
  
  

In Operations Manager 2007 R2, the Operations console performance has been greatly improved. These improvements are most evident in:

• Opening new views in the monitoring space
  
  
• Pivoting between views
  
  
• Selecting multiple items in the results view and rendering the details pane more quickly
  
  
• Indicating that a view is in the progress of loading
  
  

In Operations Manager 2007 R2, the notification feature has been restructured to make it easier to configure. The Notifications folder contains folders for Channels, Subscribers, and Subscriptions. A notification is sent by channels, such as SMTP mail or command. Subscribers are the entities that receive a notification, for example user@smtpaddress.com. Subscriptions describe what the subscriber will be notified of and on what schedule notifications will be sent. You can create new channels and subscribers prior to the configuration of a subscription. However, the New Subscription wizard provides the ability to create new channels and subscribers if the one you want to use does not already exist. In addition, Operations Manager 2007 R2 provides the capability to create a new subscription directly from an alert and to add the parameters from the selected alert to an existing subscription.

Support has been added to monitor IIS 7 without having to enable the backward compatibility APIs or legacy management features.

Operations Manager 2007 R2 will discover and monitor 64 bit ASP.NET applications running on IIS servers.

Operations Manager 2007 R2 supports up to 2,000 URL monitors per management server. The overall capacity of URL monitors has increased commensurately for the whole management group.

In Operations Manager 2007 R2 Reporting, the object picker has been enhanced to enable searching and filtering by name or class of object, making it easier to find the objects you need when customizing a report.