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What makes an ideal OpsMgr administrator/specialist/consultant?

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Walter posted an interesting entry on his blog about OpgMgr 2007 qualifications and requirements: https://wchomak.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!F56EFE25599555EC!969.entry.

I must say I fully agree with it and can add some additional input.

1. Responsibility and accountability

OpsMgr is a tool that is very powerful. With OpsMgr administrator privilege and agents installed on all Windows servers in the enterprise the OpsMgr administrator could easily halt the whole enterprise to a stop by malicious or inexperienced action, especially if the agent action account is local system or local admin (which is often the case due to overhead in maintenance when using domain accounts).

Therefore OpsMgr administrator must be a trusted, accountable and responsible individual

2. Communication and collaboration skills

Since OpsMgr monitors a lot of technologies the OpsMgr administrator should be able to communicate fluently with other Administrators that administer monitored services (AD, web applications).

Moreover he/she should also communicate well with external partners (consider external MPs) as well as in-house development teams (consider developing custom in-house MPs)

And finally communication with executive IT personnel should be good, since they often require specific reporting on IT services availability, performance and operations metrics.

3. Technical capability to use development techniques

OpsMgr is not only a product, it is a platform. OpsMgr administrator should understand the whole platform and be able to extend it. Building custom monitors, MPs, reports, tools, scripts requires:

  • knowlege of scripting technologies (Powershell, VBscript, WMI)
  • knowledge of XML (all MPs are XML based)
  • knowledge of SQL Reporting Services (for developing custom reports)
  • understanding of object oriented design and basics of .NET (OpsMgr is itself object oriented plus the OpsMgr SDK is a .NET library)

4. Knowledge and understanding of processes around Operations - ITIL and/or MOF

Implementing and running OpsMgr also means understanding ITIL/MOF processes related to IT management, mainly (but not exclusively) in ITILv3 terminology in these areas:

  • Service Operation: Problem Management
  • Service Strategy: Event Management
  • Service Design: Availability Management, Capacity Management, IT Service Continuity

 

So just as Walter mentioned this role requires not only "depth" but also "breadth" of knowledge + quite a lot of "soft skills" (communication, collaboration, responsibility).