Re: [ActiveDir] Active Directory Monitoring with MOM

[Glenn Corbett]

Title: Message

yep, use MOM here for our AD infrastructure (2 Forests, 4 domains total).  I've deployed both NetIQ and MOM.   A repost of something similar asked on the exchange lists:   Essentially both products can perform the same levels of monitoring and reporting, however MOM requires a LOT more legwork to get the same result. The NetIQ interface as you said is more logical and easier to navigate, and it seems a lot more thought has been given to providing a clean interface for administrators. Setting up alerts etc for MOM for say a single server is MUCH more tedious than for NetIQ.  MOM's grouping of monitoring into a hierarchal structure based on attributes creates more confusion IMHO.  We have required some scripting to create custom attributes on servers just to enable some groups to be created (by pulling back these custom attributes), not necessary on NetIQ as it allow arbitrary grouping of servers (MOM does allow this as well, but its not as intuitive or efficient).  With NetIQ a simple drag/drop of a task or monitoring job onto the device in question is much easier and allows more targeted monitoring to occur.  Currently with MOM if I really want to perform specific monitoring of a server, I jump into perfmon and set up custom monitoring, rather than try and make MOM do it. Arbitrary grouping / monitoring of different core servers in a different way is where MOM really falls down IMHO.  With NetIQ, I can simply change the monitored jobs on each specific server, changing thresholds for each one, and even disabling some jobs if I feel like.  Attempting to do this with MOM is an exercise in frustration, since most settings are based on the monitoring groups which are attached to a group of servers based on a specific attribute (registry setting, name etc), not the server itself.  For example, we have 6 exchange servers.  If I want to monitor the gateway server differently, or set different thresholds (eg I'm not concerned if the outgoing SMTP queue length on the gateway gets about 50, but on a mailbox server I am), this is MUCH more difficult on MOM than it should be. Currently, I set the threshold lower for all exchange servers, and simply ignore the ones from the gateway where they are under *my* determined threshold.  Not pretty, and makes it more difficult for me to set up paging / sms interfaces for our after-hours support team, as they get a lot of unnecessary alerts. The scripting interface for both products is pretty-much on par. I am quite disappointed with the requirement to add-on packs for MOM to effectively monitor NT v4.0 servers, as this should be a core feature of the system (yes, I do realise MS want me to upgrade to 2k, 2003, but it isn't going to happen soon).   Add-on packs for both products are neither here nor there, as you require packs for application-specific monitoring of most applications (like Exchange, SQL), however NetIQ currently has wider choice for non-Microsoft applications (IBM, Oracle etc), and wider OS support. The NetIQ reporting / graphing is miles ahead of MOM, however with MOM you always can use Excel to provide customised reporting and graphing. In MOM's defence it is essentially a v1 product (even though it is based on other well-known product *grin*), so I am expecting big things from MOM 2004.   As for costs, my undertsanding that MOM is fairly expensive, but NetIQ is slightly higher (all our MS licensing is covered under our select / enterprise agreement).   As for hardware requirements, we have a quad processor Xeon server with 2gb RAM providing the database backend, and a dual processor Xeon with 1gb RAM providing the front end services (Compaq/HP Proliant 570, and 530 respectively).    We have had issues with the size of the MOM database, and have had to ramp back event log collection due to the database overflowing (IIRC MOM has a 30gb limit on the database in the current version).   Overall, both products can perform the same task, however I feel NetIQ currently has the upper hand between the two.  Next version of MOM should be interesting to see. Glenn ----- Original Message ----- From: Chris Flesher To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2003 3:13 AM Subject: [ActiveDir] Active Directory Monitoring with MOM I'm wondering if anyone uses Microsoft Operations Manager to monitor their AD infrastructure? If not, what other product(s) are used, and how do you feel about them? What are the relative costs for the product?   Chris Flesher