OpsMgr 2012 UNIX/Linux Authoring Templates: Process Monitoring

In Operations Manager, custom rules and monitors can be used to extensively build on the out-of-the-box Management Pack contents. Unfortunately, this kind of custom authoring for UNIX/Linux monitoring carried a steep learning curve with OpsMgr 2007 R2. However, the 2012 release of Operations Manager has some new features to enable many common UNIX/Linux authoring scenarios using templates, directly from the console.  The first of these new templates I wanted to cover is the new process monitoring template.

UNIX/Linux Process Monitoring Template

Operations Manager 2007 R2 included the Unix Service Monitoring template for custom monitoring of daemons on UNIX and Linux agents.   This template has been replaced in the System Center 2012 release of Operations Manager with the far more capable UNIX/Linux Process Monitoring template.   The new UNIX/Linux Process Monitoring template allows more flexibility in process/daemon monitoring, including the ability to monitor for minimum and maximum process count thresholds, and the ability to filter processes on arguments in addition to the process name. For this example, I will walk through the use the UNIX/Linux Process Monitoring template to monitor a Tomcat daemon.

The UNIX/Linux Process Monitoring template is accessible in the Authoring Pane of the Operations Console.   It can be launched with the “Add Monitoring Wizard” task under the Management Pack Templates view.

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