Centralized monitoring of OS crashes and unexpected application terminations (known as "Dr. Watson" errors) was recently added to Microsoft's Desktop Optimization Pack (DOP), a set of tools for client diagnostics and repair, application management, and inventory. Known as Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM), the new tool aggregates error-related activity across an organization's Windows clients and should make the DOP more appealing. However, purchase of the DOP requires that customers first buy Software Assurance (SA) on their client OS, and it is unlikely that crash monitoring alone will compel customers to undergo the annual expense of both SA and DOP.

PC Monitoring Promotes Software Assurance

DEM is a late addition to the DOP, a package introduced in late 2006 that contains tools acquired through four acquisitions (AssetMetrix, DesktopStandard, Softricity, and Winternals). These tools allow administrators to do the following:

• Scan client PCs and build a comprehensive list of the installed software
• Better control system and application settings on desktop PCs through Group Policy
• Centrally manage Windows applications that are downloaded on demand from a server and run on users' desktops in a virtualized environment
• Diagnose and repair crippled PCs or balky applications and recover lost or deleted data.

Microsoft uses the DOP as a way to encourage customers with Enterprise Agreements (EAs) to include SA on the Windows client OS as part of their EA. (SA on the Windows client OS costs between US$28 and US$63 a year, depending on the customer's volume discount.) For an additional cost of US$6 to US$10/year per client, DOP is a remarkable bundle for customers who already have SA for their client OS. As of June, more than 1 million DOP licenses have been sold, according to Microsoft.

Reporting on PC Software Crashes

DEM is a scaled-down edition (i.e., subset) of Microsoft's Operations Manager (OM) 2007 monitoring product and uses OM 2007's Agentless Exception Monitoring (AEM) feature to collect and store data about client-side OS and application crashes and unexpected terminations in a SQL Server database. No monitoring agent need be installed on client machines; administrators configure Group Policy to instruct the Windows Error Reporting modules built into Windows 2000, XP, and Vista to redirect error data to the organization's own DEM server instead of to Microsoft. Error data can include information such as application name and version, pertinent registry values, memory dumps, and the names of all drivers loaded at the time of the crash.

By aggregating error reports on a server, IT staff can determine how often OS components or applications crash and how many computers and users are affected. DEM leverages OM 2007's sophisticated reporting capabilities, such as the ability to graph the frequency with which the most error-prone executables crash. DEM could prove especially useful to financial services firms and other businesses with mission-critical desktop applications developed in-house and coded to use Windows Error Reporting. It also may help IT staff identify steps needed to fix or mitigate crash-related problems with Microsoft client software. Assuming an organization configures OM to forward error reports to Microsoft, the company claims that, for approximately 20% of error types, the Microsoft data center will be able to link the problem with a specific article in Microsoft's support Knowledge Base.

DEM is a significant improvement over its predecessor, called Corporate Error Reporting (CER) 2.0, offered free to customers with SA on their Windows client OS (but rarely used). CER simply stored crash data in files in a directory hierarchy and forced customers to develop their own scripts and tools for analysis,

Two Options for Deployment

Microsoft offers DOP customers the option to deploy client-side error monitoring using either the DEM tool or the full OM 2007 product. In either scenario, purchase of the DOP for each monitored client covers the client-side licensing costs for error monitoring. In other words, no Client Operations Management Licenses (OMLs) are required.

For a variety of reasons, most customers interested in client-side error monitoring elect to use the full OM 2007 product rather than the DEM tool. DEM takes just as much effort to deploy, contains no unique features, can't be used to monitor servers, and can't be upgraded in-place to the full OM 2007 later. While Microsoft makes DEM available for "free" to DOP purchasers, they don't include rights to SQL Server, on which the monitoring infrastructure depends. Ironically, the least expensive way for most organizations to acquire SQL Server for this purpose is to buy a copy of the "Operations Manager Server 2007 with SQL Server Technology"—i.e., the full OM 2007 product—for approximately US$1,300.

Customers who currently have SA active on their Windows clients and haven't yet bought DOPs don't need to purchase copies of DOP to perform client-side error monitoring until the end of their SA agreement. As part of the company's transition plan, Microsoft is giving active SA customers this special grace period to use the monitoring feature without charge.

Resources

The Desktop Optimization Pack is covered in more detail in "Desktop Management Applications Become Subscriptions" on page 36 of the Nov. 2006 Update.

Agentless Exception Monitoring and other capabilities of OM 2007 are covered in "Operations Manager 2007 Explored" on page 12 of the June 2007 Update.

OM 2007 licensing is detailed in "Operations Manager 2007 Packaging, Licensing, Pricing" on page 22 of the June 2007 Update.

Additional details about Corporate Error Reporting are covered in "Windows Error Reporting Tracks Down Bugs" on page 3 of the July 2003 Update and "Software Assurance Improved" on page 24 of the July 2003 Update.