The array of available network
and system monitoring tools
can be bewildering. Most are expensive and work for a limited
number of products and controls.
Others require monitored products
and controls to support a protocol
such as SNMP. Some are dedicated
solely to security event management
and others focus on both security
and broader operations.
Microsoft has its own monitoring
product called Microsoft Operations
Manager (MOM) 2005, which fits into
the latter category. MOM is designed
for large enterprises. It’s open and
extensible, meaning that it can be
used to monitor not just Microsoft
products but those from third parties,
and it reports security-related events
and other information.
MOM 2005 is too expensive for
smaller networks, so Microsoft
released MOM 2005 Workgroup Edition, which retails for $499 and is
designed for use in networks with as
many as 10 servers. MOM Workgroup
Edition is also a great tool for larger
environments that want to monitor
only a small number of servers or several groups of servers. (You can deploy
more than one copy of MOM Work-group Edition in an enterprise.)
Let’s look at how to use MOM 2005
Workgroup Edition to monitor systems and networks for potential security events and how to plan for
deployment and configuration issues.
In a future article, I’ll discuss Management Packs, which are used to
expand the functionality and reporting features of MOM, including how
to customize and create your own
packs.
Preparing for MOM
Before installing MOM 2005 Work-group Edition, you need to ensure that
your environment and installation
server are prepared for it. The first
requirement is that you have and use
Active Directory (AD). MOM 2005
Workgroup Edition, like the full version of the product, requires AD for
authentication and service discovery.
The second requirement is that the
installation server be running a 32-bit
version of Windows Server 2003. (Any
edition will do.)
The Workgroup Edition version of
MOM 2005 also requires that a database be installed on the same server
as MOM. The good news is that you
don’t need to install a full version of
Microsoft SQL Server 2000. (SQL
Server 2005 isn’t supported.) You can download Microsoft SQL Server 2000
Desktop Engine (MSDE 2000) for free
at http://download.microsoft.com
and install it instead. The instance of
SQL Server 2000 or MSDE and the
SQL Server Agent used by MOM must
both be configured to start automatically.
Last, MOM 2005 Workgroup Edition requires that the server it’s
installed on be running Microsoft IIS,
have version 1.1 of the Microsoft .NET
Framework installed, and have Background Intelligent Transfer Service
(BITS) 2.0. Like the database and database agent software, BITS must be
configured to start automatically. You
can change the startup type by using
the Microsoft Management Console
(MMC) Services snap-in, which you
can launch from the command line by
running services.msc.
Although not recommended, you
can install MOM 2005 Workgroup Edition on a server that’s running other
applications, such as Windows Server
Update Services (WSUS), and which
already has one or more databases.
You might want to install MOM on a
server used for other applications if
you would otherwise exceed the 10-server licensing limitation. If the
server already has a database installed
on it and you prefer to use a dedicated database for MOM, you can install a
new instance of SQL Server or MSDE
and select that when you install
MOM.
Installing the MOM Server
Installing MOM 2005 Workgroup Edition itself is easy. Loading the installation CD-ROM in the drive launches
the Microsoft Operations Manager
2005 Setup Resources wizard, which
has several tabs. On the Setup Tasks
tab (the default) are three steps:
- Check Prerequisites
- Install MOM 2005 Workgroup
Edition
- Configure MOM 2005 Workgroup
Edition
Click step 1, Check Prerequisites, to
ensure that your system meets the
minimum requirements listed above for MOM 2005 Workgroup Edition to
install. There are two options when
checking prerequisites. The default is
to check requirements for a complete
install on the server. The second option
is to check requirements for the console only, which you would use if you
were installing the MOM console on a
workstation. Click Check to begin the
requirements check; the results are
displayed on a Web page. If any
requirements haven’t been satisfied,
you’ll see details about why and what
you can do to correct the problem.
Click step 2 to launch the MOM
2005 Workgroup Edition setup wizard.
The wizard prompts you for your
name, the name of your organization,
and the 25-digit product key. After you
enter this information, you’ll be
prompted to specify an installation
folder, or you can use the default.