Hello,

I'm somewhat unfamiliar with SCOM, as my background is more Java centric.  My shop is a split .NET and Java shop, and there seems to be some debate about whether it's appropriate to write directly into SCOM databases from applications using  "InsertCustomMonitoringEvent" and "InsertCustomMonitoringPerformanceData" API calls.  Presently we are doing what I think is called "Agentless monitoring" and gathering data from Event Logs into SCOM.

If you're writing new apps (either .NET or Java), is it considered a normal practice to log into SCOM using the APIs above, or is that an antipattern?  As I've read about SCOM, it seems like there's an expectation that "Management Packs" get installed into it, and they provide the ability to tune monitoring for different apps and hardware.  So, would it be a best practice to build a "Management Pack" for custom apps?  There's also discussion of using Avicode with this approach.

I'm an architect, and charged with making sure we're making good long term decisions about app architecture.  Since we're a split shop, I'm concerned that this idea is only helpful for half of the shop, and would appreciate guidance from others experienced with SCOM and Avicode.

Thanks,
jmr

Hi

First off - I suspect you are using agent based monitoring. A SCOM agent installed onto each server and the agent is using a variety of data sources to pull the data e.g. event logs, perfmon counters, scripts??

Next - I personally don't know of anyone writing directly to the SCOM databases - it does tie your monitoring into SCOM which with my Microsoft hat on I'm happy to see ;-)

However, with my pragmatic hat on, I'd probably look to a more "general" approach. I'd look to develop your apps \ code with an emphasis on providing monitoring endpoints, hooks into it and logging to windows application logs where possible e.g. .Net apps 

This way you can create management packs to look for the events and leverage the endpoints to pull data. For developers, creating MPs would be relatively straight forward:

1. The definitive guide to Management Pack Authoring - MVA Series by Brian Wren

2. The System Center Management Pack Authoring Guide

I would certainly reccomend investigating Application Performance Monitoring (APM) which is the original Avicode developed significantly for SCOM 2012.

Regards

Graham