Hi, A very basic question. What are the alerts that monitors basic system unavailability. Is it "Hearbeat failure" alerts or "Failed to connect to computer" alerts? Are the two alerts mentioned above similar? I am aware that when 3 consecutive heartbeats are missed, SCOM conducts ping diagnostics on the system and if ping also fails, it generates "Failed to connect to computer" alert. Can we have either of the two alerts in the environment? Are there any other crisp methods of monitoring system unavailability? Thanks in advance, Pallavi G

Heartbeat failed means that the agent is no longer communicating with its management server/gateway. It could be that the SCOM service simply isn't running or the box is really down. A "failed to connect to computer" occurs after a Heartbeat Failure - the management server will attempt to ping the agent in question and if it doesn't get a response, it will generate this alert."Fear disturbs your concentration"

Hi Specifically, to answer this question - "Can we have either of the two alerts in the environment?" - you cannot have a Failed to Connect to Computer alert without an associated Heartbeat failure alert because, as you have mentioned in your initial post, it is the heartbeat failure (3 missed heartbeats) that kicks off the ping that generates (if the server doesn't respond to the ping) the Failed to Connect to Computer alert. - you can have a heartbeat failure without a failed to connect to computer alert. This generally means the agent has been stopped or uninstalled. Hence the Management Server doesn't get a heartbeat but the ping succeeds as the server is available. Other methods of monitoring system unavailability? - at a very basic level you can use the TCP authoring template to check port availability on a system - you can also use the OLE DB template to check database availability - the network device module also does availability for network devices Not sure I'd call any of them "crisp" or robust but it depends what depth of monitoring you are looking for. Cheers Graham View OpsMgr tips and tricks at http://systemcentersolutions.wordpress.com/

Hi, You can also refer to the following threads for more information: Failed to connect to computer vs heartbeat failure: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/operationsmanagergeneral/thread/2a894705-f1b0-424a-8155-482b13da3b95 Heartbeat Failure and Failed to Connect Alerts with Duration: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jonathanalmquist/archive/2011/05/13/heartbeat-failure-and-failed-to-connect-alerts-with-duration.aspxPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Thanks for all your replies. Here we are trying to automate responses to SCOM alerts and we are trying to figure out which one alert would be indicative of system availability/ unavailability. I went through the links above but still not clear on which could be the one alert which tell me when the system is down. Can we have all the hearbeat alerts intact and then pick up " Failed to connect to computer" alerts for automation? Thanks and regards, Pallavi

Hi It is the Failed to connect to computer alert that is most relevant to you. The heartbeat alert just means the agent is not available. Note however failed to connect to computer isn't definitive proof the remote computer is down. It just isn't responding to a ping. It could be an intermediate (network) device that is down. Question - "Can we have all the hearbeat alerts intact and then pick up " Failed to connect to computer" alerts for automation?" Answer - Yes. You can use powershell for looking for specific alerts (or it is even easier if you are using Opalis \ Orchestrator and the OpsMgr IP). Cheers Graham View OpsMgr tips and tricks at http://systemcentersolutions.wordpress.com/