How do you monitor PS2k3 sp2 availability?

[stephen.black]

My previous role was the NOC Monitor & Response admin team lead so I
have a close tie with monitoring of server/app availablity and the
metrics that go with.

Wanted to see how others were monitoring PS and the components? We are
using BMC Patrol for OS thresholds and some basic hardware checks, CIM7
for true hardware and OS monitoring. Now the creative part. Using a
tool called IP Monitor 7.5. We are scrapeing the text on various pages
and comparing to what we predetermine what should be there. Pretty good
for HTTP and port monitoring. Our OLAP was failing for some reason each
night, but when I came in and manually kicked it off a second time it
completed 4 hrs later at 100% success. Could not get to the page where
olap is displayed due to the form based authentication (limit of the
tool) so we found the table that holds the olap status (currently
building, failed due to errors etc.) set up an asp page based on that
table data and then sent IP Monitor to that asp page to check for olap
built successful, made a blackout window for 4 hrs so if anything other
than olap built successful is displayed outside of the 4 hr window I
get a page and know to kick off the olap manually. I have tons of other
unorthodox monitoring we have set up if your interested mail me. Yes,
all that hard work seems to have been wasted as MS Mom looks pretty hot
for monitoring of PS. Testing in the lab now.

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Stephen:

Be aware that your scheduled cube builds run under the OLAPAdmin ID you
created for COM+ but when you kick-off a build manually, it runs under your
current logon. I'd like to read about your other "unconventional monitoring"
approaches, and if you care to share them with everyone, I'll put them on
Project Server Experts Dot Com. Thanks.