Operations Manager 2007 Considerations

OM 2007 represents a significant advance over its predecessors. However, it also brings major technical changes that complicate migration, and its success will depend on developers inside and outside Microsoft to build MPs for the software and hardware they create. OM 2007 also closes up some room for partners, particularly management ISVs, although other opportunities remain.

Difficult Migration from MOM 2005

Although the basic architecture of OM 2007 is similar to that of MOM 2005, the radical changes to the MP format and data schemas made building support for in-place upgrades too unwieldy. Instead, Microsoft expects MOM 2005 customers to build a new OM 2007 server infrastructure, install new OM 2007 agents on all agent-monitored computers, operate the two products in parallel until the OM 2007 is producing acceptable results, and then deinstall the MOM 2005 agents and decommission the associated MOM 2005 servers.

Unfortunately, this approach means that all existing MOM 2005 operational or reporting data cannot be loaded into OM 2007 databases. It also means that trouble-ticket systems and other products that integrate with MOM 2005 using the MCF may have to be modified to work with OM 2007. Because of changes to the reporting database schema, any custom report definitions will need to be rewritten to work on OM 2007.