Section 9.3. Summary

9.3. Summary

A MOM architecture made up of a single or multiple management groups that don't exchange operations data is a great starting place for your monitoring and alerting solution. However, there are many situations that require the deployment of multiple management groups that exchange operations management data. You may need partitioning of management duties for scalability reasons, administrative needs, or because of security or configuration requirements. Management groups can be arranged in a tiered configuration where a source management group performs the bulk of the monitoring and alerting tasks and then forwards that data to a top-tier destination management group for centralized consumption and resolution. The communication between the management groups can be one way (source to destination) or two way (source to destination and back again).

The MCF is one of three MOM APIs included in the MOM SDK. It is the preferred API for exposing operational and discovery data and for building connectors that communicate data from a source management group to a destination management group or to another operations management product. MOM ships with a built-in connector called MMPC that an administrator with no programming skills can configure to forward alert and computer discovery data between management groups.

In addition to the MMPC, Microsoft has created connectors that integrate MOM data into HP OpenView, Tivoli TEC, and HP Network Node Manager. There are many ISV-built connectors available for purchase.

The next chapter looks at extending MOM's management capabilities beyond Microsoft platforms to SNMP-enabled devices and those that make use of syslog. This is done using MOM's out-of-the-box abilities and the Windows OS.