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There has been a very useful TechNet Wiki page posted that lists all the currently available management packs, and the relevant links to download them. The page also includes all management packs currently in pre-release that are due for release in the near future. As this is a wiki page, it can be easily...

Over the years there has been a number of management packs from Microsoft that have left some customer wanting, with both the level of monitoring and knowledge provided within them. That being said, over time the quality of most management packs has improved, but not at the pace everyone had hoped for...

For the past couple of months I have been using the Visual Studio Authoring Extensions quite extensively to build management packs for System Center, so I thought I would share some of what I have learnt, and I am starting with “Go To Definition”. Now, for experienced users of Visual Studio this will...

Back in 2007, Kevin Holman at Microsoft compiled a list of variables that can used to display monitoring data within an alert description, http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2007/12/12/adding-custom-information-to-alert-descriptions-and-notifications.aspx . This is extremely useful, but is...

I was tasked the other day with creating a recovery action on a monitor, which in itself is not complicated, however I needed to use a data item from the monitor workflow in the recovery. On searching, I found very little documentation about how to achieve this, but I did find a helpful example Diagnostic...

Recently, I had a requirement to discover a number of devices that existing on a Linux server, which got me thinking as previously I’ve only ever run a shell command that returns a status to determine whether an object is discovered or not. In this scenario I needed to run a script to return all...

Back in June Microsoft released the SP2 compatible version of the Exchange 2010 management pack (v.14.3.38.2), but it was very quickly pulled due to a bug. Well, Microsoft have now address this bug and the MP is now available for download again. The new version of the MP (v.14.3.38.3), and the guide...

I had a requirement to create a repeat event detection rule the other day, and I thought to myself that it would be very easy.  As it turns out though, it is not as easy to create a repeat event detection rule as it is a monitor.  When creating a new monitor you have an option to select a Repeat...

Recently, I had the need to run a logical disk free space report and knowing that this isn’t provided out of the box I created a report and put it into a new management pack.  I was then approached about collecting fragmentation data on each drive as well and this got me thinking, why don’t I create...

If you develop management packs, improve management packs or even create override management packs to improve the management provided by management packs that are on the MP catalogue, then a competition has been announced that is just for you!  Being run by SystemCenterCentral.com , this contest...

If using the SQL MP in large environments, watch out for the possibility of some severe config churn on your RMS.  The reason the SQL MP can cause config churn is because of the data it discovers, particularly when discovering databases.  If you look at a discovered database in OpsMgr, you...

Ever wanted a centralised list of all your protection groups across all of your DPM servers? Well this guide I wrote explains how you can do just that in Operations Manager. http://www.scdpmonline.org/view-dpm-protection-groups-in-operations-manager.aspx David Allen MVP System...

Do you want your voice to be heard and directly influence improvements and changes in MP Authoring? Well if you do, complete the MP Authoring Survey now ! http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/mpauthoring It will only take 10 short minutes of your time. Thank you. David Allen MVP System...

The management pack catalogue has been moved to PinPoint. http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-US/systemcenter/managementpackcatalog There has been a lot of grumblings already over its UI and usability, what do you think... Honest feedback please? With enough good feedback I'm sure it'll...