SCOM & SquaredUp & Community Power

For some time already SquaredUp has a strong focus on supporting the SCOM community. And they go about it as they attend to their business: Straightforward, no small print in their contracts/agreements, or any other BS (excuse my French ) for that matter.

As such, the community has grown even stronger. As SquaredUp puts it: ‘…SCOM is an amazingly powerful platform, but it’s the management packs that do all the heavy lifting. Thanks to the extensibility, maturity, and huge install base of SCOM, there’s a plethora of freely-available community management packs out there, covering everything…’

I totally agree with them. However, the same SCOM community also poses an unforeseen ‘risk’ of some kind. Not a bad one that is, but still one which needs to be addressed.

The ‘risk’ of the powerful SCOM community
Because of the SCOM community there are MANY good Management Packs (MPs) out there, enriching SCOM and the monitoring breadth and depth.

But WHERE to find those MPs? Well, about EVERYWHERE on the internet? And herein lies the ‘risk’: Unintentionally you’re missing out on the best SCOM community MPs, thus making your life too hard.

Or worse, you’ve got a certain awesome SCOM community MP imported in your environment. But how are you sure it’s ‘the latest & greatest’?

Wouldn’t it be totally awesome to have an overview of all the BEST SCOM community MPs out there, right in your SCOM Console?

This is exactly what SquaredUp delivers!
Wow! SquaredUp has started a whole new completely open & transparent, community project which EXTENDS your SCOM Console (2012, 2012 R2 & 2016) to simplify the discovery and life-cycle management of community MPs, including;

• Rapid discovery of the best SCOM community MPs, including searchability by type, technology, author and more.
• A view of all the SCOM community MPs you have installed, including details of your current version, the latest version available and the download location.
• Configurable notifications, allowing you to be alerted on the availability of new versions of your community MPs.

And true to the nature of the SCOM community, this MP is available for FREE. Sure you can register yourself, but it isn’t required!

Some screenshots of this SCOM Console extension in my own SCOM environment:

After import of the MP, the Console extension is to be found under Administration > Management Packs (Community):

The menu Discover Community Packs shows many community MPs, free and paid ones:

You can even search for a MP, by name, tags, author and the lot:

The menu Installed Community Packs shows the community MPs already present in your environment AND whether they’re up to date:

And last but not least, you can be alerted as well when an update comes available or check manually for updates for already imported community MPs. In order for this to work, a new MP must be created (done by the extension itself, you only have to ‘okay’ it):

Verdict
An awesome SCOM Console extension and therefore an absolute MUST HAVE for any SCOM environment.

For the MP and all the details go here. A BIG thanks and thumbs up for SquaredUp!