MOM, SMS, and WSUS: Better Together

MOM 2005, SMS 2003, and WSUS provide a comprehensive set of server monitoring, software deployment and management, and system update solutions that help IT administrators manage the availability, performance, and security of Windows-based networks and applications. MOM provides central monitoring and automatic problem resolution for computer networks whose volume scales -up to thousands of computers on the network. MOM can also continuously monitor user actions, application software, servers, and desktop computers running Windows 2000 Server or later.

Together with SMS, these tools can monitor, manage, and secure a wide range of resources, including computers, applications, and server farms. MOM provides proactive real-time system monitoring for Windows-based servers and computers throughout the extended enterprise, and SMS can deliver the software update and systems inventory capabilities to provide a full set of knowledge about the status of your information systems. The solution also delivers comprehensive event monitoring, alert management, reporting, and trend analysis for system incidents and software usage patterns. While MOM can consolidate events and automatically determine which events are of critical importance to an administrator, SMS can help to determine what clients have software installed on them, which are active, and what the usage patterns are.

Summary

By deploying solutions to manage your IT environment based on MOM and SMS, and incorporating WSUS and Microsoft Update where appropriate, you can have a better managed IT infrastructure that can be proactively managed for systems performance and response, security, and incident management in hardware and software. In this chapter, we covered the following topics:

• MOM: A solution for operations management

• SMS: A software deployment and management solution

• WSUS: Update services for decentralized environments

• MOM, SMS, and WSUS

In order to understand this better, we'll go into depth on these products and features in the book and show how these tools can be used to manage and monitor your environment. In Chapter 3, we dive into a review of the installation procedures for MOM 2005.

Chapter 3: Installing Microsoft Operations Manager 2005

Overview

One of the biggest mistakes made in the IT industry is not reading the manual. Everyone hates to read installation instructions and documentation. Failure to understand a product properly before installation often leads to ripping it out and starting all over again. Having to start over often leads to standing up in meetings and explaining why the project is behind schedule and over budget, too. The analogy of carpenters measuring twice and cutting once applies here. Cutting without properly measuring results in improper fits and waste. In this chapter, we cover the following aspects of installing MOM 2005:

• Planning concerns and requirements

• Hardware and software prerequisites for each installed component

• Security concerns and issues

• Installation steps and things to note during the installation and configuration

The goal of this chapter is to help you understand the requirements for installing MOM and how to install it right the first time. For those that choose not to read this chapter, it should prove helpful with the second installation.