Chapter 21. Proactive Monitoring and Alerting

In this Chapter

Leveraging Windows Management Instrumentation

Leveraging Scripts for Improved System Managements

Deciding What to Monitor

Determining What to Monitor and Alert Upon

Responding to Problems Automatically

Using Microsoft Operations Manager for Advanced Automation

System management has been greatly improved in Windows 2003. Great strides have been made toward making Windows 2003 better able to monitor itself and alert administrators of problems. Almost all aspects of the operating system can be exposed to various monitoring systems. Service availability, resource usage, replication queues, and most anything else an administrator would care to know about can be monitored across the enterprise. Remote systems can all report to a central location so that the health of the entire network can be viewed from a single location. This chapter endeavors to give you an idea of what technologies are available for systemwide monitoring and offer insights into the different types of monitoring and how they can be used together to give a holistic view of the network. This chapter will also make recommendations on areas on which administrators should focus their monitoring as well as give examples of scripts that can be triggered by monitoring events to try to fix problems and alert the appropriate resources that an event has occurred.