I have been working in IT since 2001 for companies such as Computacenter and Getronics. I started out as a first line support analyst supporting heterogeneous networks but rapidly worked my way up the ranks expanding my knowledge as I went to include areas such as system builds, deployments, networking, and security to name a few.In 2008 I decided to concentrate on the monitoring and management of large enterprise networks using Microsoft's System Center Operations Manager (OpsMgr) 2007 of which I have extensive knowledge. As testament to this the Windows Management User Group (WMUG), invited me to join their ranks as a Community Leader where I have been invaluable in helping to bolster the OpsMgr skills to the benefit of the group and it's members.I have now moved into an OpsMgr 2007 consultancy role to do what I like most - working with OpsMgr and sharing my knowledge and experiences with the community.
If you ever wanted to monitor Windows services, but only during business hours, then this is the post for you. I have put together an example MP that contains a new monitor type that includes a Schedule Filter so you can specify when the monitor should or shouldn’t run. The new monitor type is fundamentally the same as the monitor type for service monitoring that is included in the Microsoft.Windows.Library MP, but now has System.SchedulerFilter included.
Here is a breakdown of the modules used within the monitor type:
After the member modules are configured, the composition of the monitor type can be put together for the OK state (service running) and the BAD state (service not running).
I have also included a monitor in the management pack that uses this new monitor type. The configuration of the monitor is just the same as the configuration of the standard service monitors, but with the added parameters of Start, End and DaysOfWeekMask.
The Start parameter allows you to specify at what time monitoring should start, and the End parameter allows you specify when the monitoring should end. The DaysOfWeekMask is a number that controls which days the monitor will run. For a list of all the possible values for the DaysOfWeekMask, use this TechNet article, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee808920.aspx.
So that’s it, you can take my example MP and edit it to achieve the monitoring you are after. You can also open up the MP in one of the authoring tools and change as required; as I mentioned above, the scheduler filter can be used not only to specify when data can be processed, but it may also be used to control when data should not be processed, and you can span multiple days if required.
Have fun!
David