Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 provides a solid platform for monitoring websites, servers, network infrastructure, and applications. In the Windows IT Pro article "Operations Manger Key Performance Indicators" (January 2011), I discuss Operations Manager's integration of several important Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that monitor how well a server is performing. Operations Manager also has several dashboard options that let you use a single dashboard to determine whether your websites, applications, servers, and network infrastructure are functional. In addition, third-party products are available to help provide a comprehensive dashboard solution.
Built-In Dashboards
Several dashboards are available for Operations Manager out of the box. Operations Manager uses views to display monitored data. Views can be created for alerts, events, state, performance, diagrams, task status, web pages, and dashboards. The dashboard option lets you use a single screen to display multiple views (from two to nine views) in Operations Manager. Figure 1 is an example dashboard view in which you can see the server state (top section), server alerts (middle section), and selected performance counters (bottom section).
It's common to create a dashboard view that contains three views that are in turn scoped to a group. (A group is created with specific servers, with views limited to that scope.) This approach lets server administrators quickly see relevant information for only their servers in a single view based on the dashboard view.
The Operations Manager dashboard displays multiple views of Operations Manager data—including websites, which I discuss later in the article. However, it doesn't provide an intuitive state view for diverse types of entities in the same screen (such as the health of a server and a distributed application), nor does it provide any charts, graphs, or gauges beyond the performance view in Figure 1. This dashboard is the simplest from an installation and prerequisite perspective because it has no prerequisites other than Operations Manager. The dashboard functionality is built in to the product.
Microsoft Products with Operations Manager Dashboards
Microsoft has several options for providing Operations Manager dashboards, including Service Level Dashboard (SLD) 2.0, Visio 2010 Add-in for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Dashboard, and Microsoft System Center Service Manager 2010 Dashboard. Each of these dashboards provides additional capabilities beyond the built-in Operations Manager dashboard view. (For additional information about using Operations Manager dashboards, including where to download each of the following dashboards, see the Learning Path.)
Service Level Dashboard 2.0. SLD 2.0 uses new Operations Manager 2007 R2 functionality to provide tracking for service levels. This dashboard is useful in tracking service level objectives (SLOs) for Operations Manager entities, such as distributed applications.
- SLD 2.0 requires Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 SP1 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 SP1 (SharePoint 2010 isn't currently supported) because the dashboard is provided through the following Web Parts:
- AdminFilter—Used to select which service levels (up to 6) are displayed on the dashboard, refresh rates (30 minutes by default), how much data the view will show (past 60 minutes, 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, 60 days, week to date, past week, month to date, past month, quarter to date, past quarter, year to date, past year), and whether the aggregation type is hourly or daily.
- SLANamesWebPart—Shows the health of the target(s) chosen in the AdminFilter.
- SLOChart—Shows the health history of the highlighted target.
- SloWebPart—Shows a gauge for the highlighted target.
- TargetInstances—Shows header information for the highlighted web target.
- UserFilter—Used to select the time zone, data aggregation, dashboard duration, and whether to use only business hours—and if so, which days of the week and times.
- MasterContainer—Contains the SLANamesWebPart, SLOChart, SloWebPart, and TargetInstances, combined to form a unified dashboard (see Web Figure 1).
A distributed application exists to model the health state for Operations Manager. You can configure Service Level Tracking (SLT) to track the SLOs for the Operations Manager distributed application against an SLO goal that you define. In the example that Web Figure 2 shows, a monitor state SLO was created to track the availability of the Operations Manager distributed application. After this SLO is defined in Operations Manager, you can select SLO from the AdminFilter so that the SLO appears in the dashboard, as Web Figure 2 shows.
SLD 2.0 can also collect multiple metrics for a system, such as the percentage of processor utilization and the percentage of memory committed on the system. To view these metrics, create service-level tracking for an object and define multiple SLOs (in this case, a collection rule SLO). Both of these SLOs can be displayed in SLD 2.0, showing multiple metrics for the system. For example, Web Figure 2 shows both the processor utilization and the percentage of memory committed on the server.
SLD 2.0 lets you easily track SLOs to show an overview for various Operations Manager metrics. The dashboard is designed to work only from the SLOs, which are defined in Operations Manager's SLT. SLD 2.0 doesn't include any graphs or gauges other than those shown in Web Figure 1 and Web Figure 2. Overall, this solution provides intuitive dashboard functionality for service-level-related items in Operations Manager.
Because SLD 2.0 uses websites to display the dashboard, you can easily integrate these websites into the Operations Manager console by creating a web page view and defining the name, description, and target website. (I discuss this concept in more detail later in the article.)
Visio. The Visio 2010 Add-in for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 lets you state-enable Visio diagrams. This add-in is useful for integrating application, network, data center, or server rack diagrams into Operations Manager to make the entities' health states available for use in the diagrams.
Visio integration requires Visio 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Edition. SharePoint 2010 Enterprise is necessary to run Visio services. After the required components are installed, Visio diagrams can be saved to a SharePoint site as .vdw files, which can then be displayed in a web browser with status information gathered from Operations Manager.
Visio integration makes it easy to take an existing Visio diagram and integrate the state of objects into a web-enabled Visio diagram. Web Figure 3 shows a web-enabled Visio diagram with health state integrated for the two servers shown, including an existing UPS that could also be monitored by Operations Manager and state-enabled.
A benefit of Visio integration is the ability to take an existing Operations Manager diagram view and export it into Visio. The diagram can then be modified and uploaded to SharePoint. This process makes customizing Operations Manager diagram views simple.
Visio integration with Operations Manager lets you blend Operations Manager and Visio diagrams in combined Visio 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Enterprise environments. This dashboard option provides state-integrated views that can represent pretty much anything you can create in Visio; in addition, the dashboard has a corresponding health state in Operations Manager. However, this dashboard solution doesn't provide charts or graphs—which administrators typically require from dashboard products.
Configuration Manager Dashboard. Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 includes a dashboard that can be configured to display Operations Manager dashboard information. You can generate dashboards that contain bar charts, graphs, pie charts, and gauges based on information stored in the OperationsManager or OperationsManagerDW databases.