Easily Convert XML to MP - No Powershell Required!

So many times I find myself needing to dig into the content of  Management Pack to see exactly how it works or to pick it apart.  However you can't just open up an .mp file and expose everything.  In order to do that you need to unseal it first.  Thanks to a little help from our friends that is now easier than ever with the handy little tool below.

http://www.scom2k7.com/mp2xmlpro-management-pack-conversion-tool/

NetApp - Data ONTAP Management Pack Limitations

As most Operations Manager administrators know, monitoring for a product or technology is only as good as the Management Pack that is focused on doing such.  Today I thought I would provide some feedback on the free product/Management Pack for Operations Manager that NetApp offers for monitoring its line of storage products (OnCommand Data ONTAP Version 3.0.0.100).  The purpose of this post is to provide others insight into the Management Pack and it's limitations. 

The largest limitation of the pack is around space monitoring for Aggregates and Volumes.  We all understand at a minimum how important hard disk space monitoring is, Volume and Aggregate space monitoring is no different.  Unfortunately the design of the Management Pack limits the ability to customize that monitoring across different Aggregates and Volumes.

Issues

1. There is no out of the box monitor in terms of space in MBs.  I have created my own custom monitoring that leverages two different properties on the Aggregate and Volumes to calculate the space available in MB which allows thresholds to be set specific to instances of each class.  However this is very limited due to the fact discovery runs on a daily basis, so you see it's not real time monitoring just a stop gap measure until I can program something better.
2. The MP contains  % free space monitors for Aggregates and Volumes, however the limitation is that there is no way to customize Warning and Critical thresholds across different Aggregates and Volumes.  The end result is a global Warning/Critical thresholds for all Aggregates and Volumes.  This renders the monitor effectively useless for most organizations.

I hope anyone considering using this Management Pack will see this post before deploying.

At this time I have started development on my own free space monitoring for NetApp Aggregates and Volumes through the use of the NetApp SDK which can be found here NetApp SDK.  I plan on using custom powershell probe modules to pull in the data I need a more real time basis.

System Center Operations Manager Feedback and Suggestions

I have several pieces of what I would consider valuable feedback submitted to the Operations Manager team on the Microsoft Connect site.  I ask that everyone involved with or working with the product take a minute to review these items and provide some input on them if you agree.

The product will evolve naturally over time, but as a community we can assist in increasing the speed of that evolution.

Correlation Engine - https://connect.microsoft.com/OpsMgr/feedback/details/695055/correlation-engine-needed

Database Grooming Options Exposed Through GUI - https://connect.microsoft.com/OpsMgr/feedback/details/694746/offer-all-opsmgr-database-and-datawarehouse-grooming-options-in-gui

Update Performance View for Ease of Use - https://connect.microsoft.com/OpsMgr/feedback/details/689566/performance-view-filter-options-like-excel

Deploy Multiple Cross Platform Agents at a Time, Just like Windows Based Agent Deployments - https://connect.microsoft.com/OpsMgr/feedback/details/689555/cross-platform-discovery-wizard-deploy-multiple-agents

Last but not least, let's provide the ability to override the health of an object along with the alert severity - https://connect.microsoft.com/OpsMgr/feedback/details/688192/please-provide-ability-to-override-health-of-object-like-alert