Is there is any other MP to monitor all windows services using a “Monitor” (not Rule) ?

Question

Currently we are monitoring windows services using a "Rule" which needs manual intervention to close the Service alerts in SCOM to avoid that we are looking for a MP to monitor all windows services using a “Monitor” which will close the alert automatically once the service is up.

Please let me know if there is any such MP to make this possible.

Answer 1

Hi Adam,

alright, I know understand what your exact requirement is and I also have a solution for it :)

What you need to to is the following (it is easy to configure, you just need to follow the exact steps). You need to confisgure the so called Service Wildcard monitoring, which is also based on the windows Service templarte, but has some additional modifications. Here are the exact steps to do this:

• You need to follow the exact steps from the followiong article (which is actually very detailed and with screenshots), but without the Service Recovery part.

HOW DO I: CREATE A WILDCARD SCOM SERVICE MONITOR AND RECOVERY
http://www.opsconfig.com/how-do-i-create-a-wildcard-scom-service-monitor-and-recovery/

To make it easier for you I have marked where you need to stop:

So you need to follow the article up to the red arrow. The rest of it is regarding configuring service recovery task.

• The guide describes how you can adjust a SCOM Management Pack (the XML) in order to monitor multiple services, suing a WMI filter. Now comes the important part: When you get to enter the WMI filter, you have to use the following one (not the one from the article):

SELECT * FROM Win32_Service WHERE StartMode ='Auto'

This filter will get you all the services with an "Automatic" Startup Type on the servers, which are part of the group, which you have entered, during the template configuration.
All the other steps from the article (replacing different XML segments) remain the same.

• After you have edited the MP and saved you, after importing it, you can configure a View and then select the configure Service Monitor as target. Afterwards in the view you will see all the Automatic Services, being monitored with one monitor per service.

Please ask here if something is not clear, otherwise you just need to read the article and follwo the steps carefully, use the filter I have you and you will have you goal achieved.

I hope I could help you with that!

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(If the reply was helpful please don't forget to upvote and/or accept as answer, thank you)
Regards
Stoyan Chalakov

Answer 2

Hi @AdamMohamed-3032 ,

with SCOM you havce countless options to monitor services...

Let's first start with the Windows Server Management Pack. The Management Pack monigtors a number of Windows Services ot of the box using Monitors. You can find the MP here:

Microsoft System Center Management Pack for Windows Server Operating System 2016 and above
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=54303

After you import the MP, the following services will be automatically monitored on all your Windows Server 2016 and newer Operating Systems:

If the service you wantr to monitor isn't present in this list, then you can use the Standard Windows Service template and get any service monitored with just a few clicks:

Windows Service template
Windows Service Template - Microsoft Learn

There are also other ways to create a MP with a monitor that monitors services, like for example using MP fragments and Visual Studio with the Visual Studio Authoring Extentions, but this is considered more an advanced way to achieve the same.

And because the Windows Service Template is very popular and commonly used, I would also recommend you reading this, so that you understand the difference between the template and basic unit monitor:

SCOM: Basic Service Monitor Vs Windows Service Template
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/52110.scom-basic-service-monitor-vs-windows-service-template.aspx

I hope I was able to help.

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(If the reply was helpful please don't forget to upvote and/or accept as answer, thank you)
Regards
Stoyan Chalakov

Answer 3

Hi @AdamMohamed-3032 ,

I am not sure I fully understand what the challenge is, but both suggestions I have offered (Windows Service Monitor Template and Unit Monitor) will monitor any application or OS Service, using a monitor (not a rule). I am not even sure that you can monitor a service, using a rule.

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(If the reply was helpful please don't forget to upvote and/or accept as answer, thank you)
Regards
Stoyan Chalakov

Answer 4

Thank You for the response @SChalakov !!

Based on above suggestion it will not match my requirement. Currently I'm looking for a customization where irrespective of any application services or Operating System Services with the startup type is "Automatic" it should alert in SCOM as an monitor alert.

Thanks in advance !!

Answer 5

Hi @SChalakov

In SCOM, we can monitor Windows services by using a Windows Service template, but that should be configured for each of the service. But, our requirement is to monitoring all Windows services running on a server using only one monitor configuration.

Logic: If a windows service is "Automatic" startup type, include that in SCOM monitoring.

   If a windows service on any specific server or all servers, we should have option to exclude that from monitoring (like override).  

We have installed a community MP in our environment which does the above job, but it was configured as Rule (not monitor).

Please find the below article for your reference.

https://blogs.gowdhaman.com/2019/03/26/windows-automatic-services-monitoring-using-scom/

Regards,
Adam