Using the free Silect MPAuthor to create a class, discover and monitor a service

This post will be a simple walk through on how to create a class for an application, discover instances of that class, and then monitor a service associated with that application:

First – make sure you have the latest version of MP Author from Silect:  https://www.silect.com/mp-author/

Open up MP author, and create a new Management Pack.  If you are prompted about reference packs – choose Yes.

Provide a name for your MP.  In this example – I am going to discover and monitor anyone running the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator service.

I create a folder structure for all my custom MP’s in C:\MPDEV:

Accept default references and then choose empty management pack:

Then Finish.

 

Create the Target Class

 

 

Browse to Targets, right click – and choose New Registry Target:   (hint: A Target is the same thing as a Class)

Browse to a machine on your network running the service you seek:

In this case – I am going to browse the HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services hives, looking for the iSCSI initiator service, which is MSiSCSI.

Now if I just wanted to discover all the systems that had this registry path – I could.  But that is not really what I am after.  I want all systems that are actually RUNNING the service.  So I will trigger on the registry VALUE of “Start”.

2 = Automatic.  3 = Manual.  4 = Disabled.

I highlight the Registry value I want (Start) and click Add:

Click OK and I have this:  I want to discover when the service is set to Automatic (2)

Now I need to give my Application a name.  I could accept the defaults here but I like to customize this:

Next – we can customize the details for the discover.  I like these so I leave them at their defaults:

Next on the Expression – I can ensure that I am checking for a specific content of a registry value, or just look for the existence of a registry key or value.

For the frequency – every 1 days is almost always sufficient.  The agents will run this discovery immediately once they receive the MP so you wont need to wait a full day while testing.  Also – agents run these discoveries on every agent startup – so for testing we can bounce the agents if we need it to run again.

At this point we can save our work – and test import this into our lab.  Right click the management pack itself, and choose Deploy:

Input your SCOM server and your credentials, and MP Author will do the rest.  You will see this when it finishes:

 

Now – lets check and see if we are discovering the right instances:   In the SCOM Console > Monitoring > Discovered Inventory.  Change target type to your new class.

 

I can see right away that I am discovering instances!

 

These are showing as “Not Monitored” and this is by design.  We have not targeted ANY monitors to this class yet, therefore there will be no state to roll up.

Lets go do that now!   Back in MPAuthor, lets increment our MP version:

 

Create a Service Monitor

 

Then go to Monitors, right click, and Create New Service Monitor:

Browse the same server as before, and find your service in the list.  NOTE***  We need to change the “target” class from the default of Windows Computer, to our custom class we created as seen below:

 

Customize the name of the monitor to make good sense:

Specify your desired health states:

 

Configure and customize alerting:

 

Creating Folders and Views

 

While we are here – we should create some folders and views for our MP to round it out:

We need a folder for the MP to show up in the monitoring view:  Always choose Microsoft.SystemCenter.Monitoring.ViewFolder.Root

Then customize the name/display/description

Once that is complete – create a view:  Lets start with an Alert View:

For the folder – choose the folder we just created, and Alert category:

Set the target for the view – this will be the scope of the alerts we want to see, so I restrict this to our custom class.

Then customize the view ID/DisplayName/Description:

 

Now lets create a state view for viewing the health state of our new class:

I want an unfiltered view – so I configure it to show me all states of my custom target class:

 

Save that, and Deploy it!

 

Now I can see my Folder, and my views.  I have health state working:

And my alert views and alerts are working:

 

 

Summary:

 

As you can see – this is creating management packs the RIGHT way.  We don’t have to target everything to “Windows Computer” and try to work woth overrides and enable for this, disable for that, and make a big mess.  We should create classes for applications and monitor each application/service as an entity.

We created a class, created a monitor, and created the folder and some initial views.  Adding additional monitoring to this just gets easier and easier.