Potential Pitfall when installing SCOM R2 and updating the core MPs from the Console

Bumped into this issue when I installed a new SCOM R2 test environment. All SCOM R2 components were neatly installed and functional. Not a single Agent deployed nor any additional MPs loaded. Only the core MPs were in place.

So first I installed CU #1 for SCOM R2. Then I connected to the Management Pack Catalog Web Service through the SCOM R2 Console and selected the option to check for updates of the installed MPs.

As expected the core MPs of SCOM needed an update, so I downloaded and imported these. All through the Console. But when I checked for the presence of the System Center Core Monitoring Reports (introduced with the latest version of the SCOM Core MPs) node in the Reporting Pane, I found nothing at all:

First I was puzzled. But when checking the OpsMgr event log of the RMS I saw there was nothing amiss. No errors about the DW what so ever nor any errors about not being able to upload any Report.

So I was missing out on the most obvious part here: the related MP wasn’t loaded at all! I checked the loaded SCOM Core MPs:

As you can see, the MP containing these reports (System Center Core Monitoring Reports) isn’t present at all.

So I downloaded that particular MP, imported it and now I saw this:

That’s better!

And soon the related reports appeared:

Nice!

But the question is: Why did this happen? Is this an error of the SCOM Console functionality to get updates for installed MPs?

Actually it is not an error. More an ‘error consumer’.

Why?

The update functionality checks for updates for MPs which are already installed. But the MP containing the Reports is NEW so it is not present in previous versions of the SCOM R2 Core MPs. The update functionality is bound to overlook it.

I agree, it would be nice to have a warning mechanism in place which shows a message when not all components of a MP to be updated are shown. But then again, RTFM is the MOST important thing to do before and after importing any MP!

So lesson learned. Also that the MP Catalog which is available through the SCOM R2 Console is a nice feature but that it needs to be used with some careful planning and thinking. Just clicking away won’t do the trick here at all.