Windows Server 2008 R2 Monitoring

• Windows Server Operating System MPs

• Active Directory Server MPs

• Windows Cluster Management MPs

• Microsoft Windows DNS Server MPs

• Microsoft Windows DHCP Server MPs

• Microsoft Windows Group Policy MPs

• Microsoft Windows Hyper-V MPs

• Windows Server Internet Information Services MPs

• Windows Server Network Load Balancing MPs

• Windows Server Print Server MPs

• Windows Terminal Services MPs

Each of the preceding categories includes several different management packs to support monitoring, discovery, and libraries. These management packs were developed by the product groups and include deep knowledge about the product.

The features of the management packs for the following major systems are as follows:

• Windows Operating System Management Pack— Monitors and alerts all the major elements that Windows Server 2008 R2 runs on, including processor, memory, network, disk, and event logs. It gathers performance metrics and alerts on thresholds, as well as critical events.

• Active Directory Management Pack— Monitors and alerts on Active Directory key metrics, such as replication latency, domain controller response times, and critical events. The management pack generates synthetic transactions to test the response time of the PDC, LDAP, and other domain services.

• DNS Management Pack— Monitors and alerts on DNS servers for resolution failures and latency as well as critical events.

• IIS Management Pack— Monitors and alerts on IIS services, application pools, performance, and critical events.

On all these elements, administrators can generate Availability reports to ensure that the servers and systems are meeting the service-level agreements (SLAs) set by the organization.

The management pack includes a comprehensive set of reports that are specific to Windows Server 2008 R2. These include reports on performance, availability, events, and even configuration for the various Windows Server 2008 R2 roles. These reports can be generated ad hoc, scheduled for email delivery on a regular basis, or even generated into web pages for portal viewing. Figure 1 shows a Performance report for a server. The report shows that processor utilization is low and that memory utilization is steady, with regular skips of activity in the pages per sec, which correspond to available memory dips.

Figure 1. Sample Performance report.

This kind of summary Performance report is invaluable to reporting on the Windows Server 2008 R2 infrastructure and really ties together the low-level technical monitoring into a high-level view that support personnel can use.