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I’ve been one of the lucky guys to be able to attend the MMS 2009 in Las Vegas a few weeks ago. One of the things I saw over there was System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2. Apart from the new features mentioned by Kerrie Meyler in a short article here, there’s one feature I would like to point out.
There’s one sentence in the WhatsNewOverview from Microsoft that somewhat refers to this feature: “…With enhanced capabilities to monitor up to thousands of URLs…” but since this sentence does not really clarify on the subject I would like to shed some more light on this here.
The website monitoring in OpsMgr 2007 (SP1) is a cool feature, however for those who would need to monitor a lot of websites, RSI would be lurking. We monitor about 100-120 websites and to configure website monitoring we needed to click through each and every one of them to get the job done. Of course there is a script to somewhat automate the process, but it involves setting up website monitoring based on the default template whereas we needed some customizations.
Now in R2 the BulkImport-Tool for website monitoring is introduced, which will allow you to import thousands of websites in one time. Furthermore there is a possibility to change the Website monitoring template to your own needs before your import so there’s no more need to go through all website monitors for your customizations. So this means bye bye RSI and hurray and on your knees for automation ’cause this is a feature I’ve been waiting for, for a long time.
Furthermore, R2 provides capability to monitor more websites per watcher node (=the agent monitoring the website for you).