Management pack templates and the Add Monitoring Wizard are used to create and target custom Essentials object types, enabling you to extend the management capabilities of Essentials.
When you create a custom object type with the Add Monitoring Wizard, the attributes, monitors, object discoveries, rules, tasks, and views necessary to start monitoring the applicable objects are automatically created and added with the object type to the specified management pack. These display in the Essentials console and are managed just as if they were originally provided with the management pack.
Essentials provides templates for similar object types to help make it easier to create custom Essentials objects with the Add Monitoring Wizard. This is comparable to the Microsoft Word templates that help make it easier to create similar Word document types. Essentials provides the following templates:
- OLE DB Data
Source This template generates synthetic
transactions that monitor the availability of databases. The
default view for this template is in the Synthetic
Transaction folder of the Monitoring pane of the
Essentials console.
- Ping Monitor This
template generates monitors that verify the availability of
computers and devices that cannot be monitored using SNMP or do not
have agents installed on them. The default view for this template
is in the Ping Monitor folder of the Monitoring pane
of the Essentials console.
- TCP Port This
template generates synthetic transactions that monitor the
availability of services. The default view for this template is in
the Synthetic Transaction folder of the Monitoring
pane of the Essentials console.
- Web Application This
template generates monitors that verify the availability of
Web-based applications. The default view for this template is in
the Web Application folder of the Monitoring pane of
the Essentials console.
- Windows Service This
template generates monitors and rules that verify the availability
of a Windows service. The results of these monitors and rules are
in alert and state views of the Monitoring pane of the
Essentials console.
New templates can be added to the management group. For example, the ASP .NET management pack adds the ASP .NET Application and ASP.NET Web Service templates.