Section 2.4. Testing and Piloting


2.4. Testing and Piloting

The implementation of MOM 2005 at Leaky Faucet is a significant event that will touch every server. To reduce the risk of something going wrong during the implementation, the MOM administrators have gathered the business and technical requirements, planned out their design, estimated how much data will be collected per day, planned out database sizes, and prepared the environment for inter-component communication. The next step is to test MOM 2005 and figure out what changes are needed. This is very hard to do until there is something to work with.

The director of IT requires that the following tasks be completed before the production rollout is authorized:

  1. Take every reasonable measure to prevent outages and mistakes during the rollout.

  2. Adapt the current support procedures to take advantage of new features. Prepare the support staff to use this new tool.

  3. Ensure that the new solution meets the needs of all the key stakeholders before production implementation.

The Windows team creates a test environment that mirrors the production environment on critical points of configuration, but not scale. It consists of a single management server, a SQL Server that will house both the operations database and the reporting database and web site, and one of each type of server to be managed. All of the consoles will be installed on the management server as well as on desktops. The remote site support administrators will help test the overall security and Web console functionality.

Next, the test plan is reviewed to make sure the deliverables are covered. This plan starts after MOM 2005 has been successfully installed and configured. During piloting, the following must be accomplished:

  1. Deploy agents to one of each type of server. This will provide a sample of the type of information that MOM will produce. Agents must be deployed to servers that are outside of the firewalls. Procedures for uninstalling agents and testing agent failover between management servers must be developed.

  2. Install the management packs for all of the applications that will be monitored. Import the management packs one at a time so the impact of each on the monitored system and on MOM can be seen.

  3. Configure notifications via email and pager.

  4. Work on the process to resolve alerts so all team members use the same process every time. This will ease the transition of alerts from one team member to another or between teams.

  5. Practice backing up and restoring MOM 2005 and management packs.

  6. Configure security on the reports and teach the CFO how to navigate the Reporting console.

  7. Populate domain-level MOM groups with key stakeholders that are participating in the pilot to ensure appropriate access to the correct objects.

  8. Send all team members to formal MOM 2005 administration training.

Leaky Faucet sets a start and end date for the pilot to avoid scope creep and prevent the pilot from rolling straight into the production implementation . The pilot duration is estimated to take 21 days (training aside). At the end of this time, Leaky Faucet will take all of the feedback from the key stakeholders, as well as all that they learned, and modify the design if necessary. The rollout plan will be finalized in documented form. This primary deliverable from the pilot will help reassure everyone.




Essential Microsoft Operations Manager
Essential Microsoft Operations Manager
ISBN: 0596009534
EAN: 2147483647
Year: N/A
Pages: 107
Authors: Chris Fox voc

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