Chapter 10. Extending Monitoring

You can purchase a third-party solution to integrate operational data from other platforms (e.g., Unix) or from network devices (e.g., routers and switches) into MOM. Some of the companies that build MOM connectors also create solutions for monitoring non-Microsoft devices. For example, eXc (http://www.excsoftware.com) sells both types of solutions, as does Vintela (now owned by Quest Software, http://www.vintela.com or http://www.quest.com), Skywire (http://www.skywiresoftware.com), and Jalasoft (http://www.jalasoft.com).

Third-party solutions provide the richest possible integration experience, but are usually expensive. If you don't have the option to buy a pre-made solution or to have a solution custom developed, and you only need basic integration between MOM and Unix or MOM and other networked devices, then you can use some native MOM 2005 capabilities and the Windows OS. Unix-based systems track operations data in syslog files , which a MOM management server can receive and parse, generating alerts based on the content of those files. Network devices and computers can make use of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), which is both a communication protocol and a data storage format to track configuration information and send traps (which are kind of like an alert without any diagnostic, historic, or resolution data) to central monitoring consoles.

This chapter teaches you how to configure MOM and the Windows OS to make use of SNMP and syslogs so that you can integrate other platforms into your MOM monitoring solution.