MOM 2005 Web Part for WSS 2.0 (and a nice trick for all you MOSS lovers)
Hey,
A really cool and OOTB web part I came across today: MOM web part. For those of you that are not familiar with this server: MOM or Microsoft Operation Manager 2005 is a great monitoring application that allows you "avoid the avoidable" by providing the proper knowledge about Microsoft's servers. A great example for that approach is the MOM pack for MOSS 2007 and the MOM pack for WSS 3.0 that was built by the MOSS team and is defined to send alerts and warning whenever MOSS is getting too close to the edge...
That's cool and all but listen to this. How about getting alerts from MOM in a special Out-Of-The-Box very awesome WEB PART?! Just think about it: SharePoint can actually tell you when he is reaching a known limit. Well, believe it or not but this sweet baby has been around for quite some time and has been hiding all this time in the MOM Power Toys pack (which is part of the MOM Resource Kit - available here). The only problem is that this web part is designed to work with SPS 2003. I actually see it as a real poetic justice since the SPS 2003 is known to crash much more often but what about MOSS 2007?
Well MOSS lovers, I'm not leaving you behind. There is a nice workaround for displaying MOM alerts in MOSS and it's actually not too complicated. The only limitation is that you'll need to have a SQL Server 2005 with the fresh-from-the-oven SP2 installed.
The first thing you should do is to create a simple alert report in Reporting Services. Now, configure the new report to display all of the alerts you'd like to receive from MOM into our beloved MOSS (for example: no connectivity with the SMTP server - great for the administration page!). After the report is done, you can use the new RS Viewer that is part of SP2 for SQL to display the content of this report. If you installed SP2 but never configured you MOSS to integrate with Reporting Services - just follow these instructions. And that's it! You now have all of the MOM info you ever wanted in displayed in MOSS 2007.
Just a little extra thing you should bear in mind about the MOM web part - the main reason why I haven't tried to make a raw-deploy for it to WSS 3.0 is not that I'm a real lazy guy (Hmm OK. But there is actually ANOTHER very good reason!) but that MOM 2005 is actually dying. Yep, we have a new king in town and he answers to the name System Center Operations Manager 2007 or Ops Mgr 2007. So, if you can live with the Reporting Services solution you just read - I think it's preferred since I'm guessing Ops Mgr 2007 will have the proper and supported WSS 3.0 comeback for the old WSS 2.0 MOM Web part.
Just to summarize the circle of life:
Yesterday we had old MOM 2005's web part for the old SPS 2003. Today (after the release of SP2 for SQL 2005), we can use RS to connect old MOM with the new MOSS 2007. Tomorrow, we'll have the shiny and sparkling Ops Mgr 2007 with the new MOSS 2007 and they'll all play together.
Good time to watch Lion King again or something...
C ya,
Adir Ron.