Customer Reviews

Essential Microsoft Operations Manager

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you are looking to get your feet wet with Microsoft Operations Manager 2005, this IS the book for you. However - right up front I WILL STATE - if you are an EXPERIENCED MOM Admin - you will not find a lot of value here, unless of course, you want a different viewpoint.

As a little bit of background, Chris has worked as a Consultant with a major Microsoft Gold Partner as an Exchange Consultant, he has worked for a major food company as a multi-application administrator, and is now with Microsoft as a Product Specialist in the SharePoint product line. So, how does that qualify him as a MOM Expert - enough so to write this book? Chris simply excels at anything he decides to be involved with. He was (and likely still is to some degree) the pre-eminent Exchange expert in the Midwest during the time he was doing Exchange. He excels in his understanding and ability to provide pre-sales guidance on why SharePoint is important and how it can solve business problems.

When he worked actively with MOM (2000 and 2005)he implemented the platform and transitioned the day-to-day maintenance and management to another team..

Essential MOM delivers exactly what it promises - the essential information on how to get started with setting up MOM, configuring MOM, and how to get started with operational management with MOM. It touches on the essentials of database configuration, management pack work, and essentials of how to interact with reports and consoles for administrators and those you want to give view-only to.

Some of the crticism for this book is clearly due to expectations that were not met. However, I don't put that blame on Chris - he delivered what he intended. I would ask the critics to do this - If you are very experienced WITH MOM, get ahold of O'Reilly. I suspect that a MOM Cookbook or more advanced treatment or MOM for experienended Admins would interest them greatly. But, please - don't put this book down because it delivered essentials - not advanced MOM techniques. It is, of course, called "Essential Microsoft Operations Manager" for a reason.

Oreilly seems to be getting a bit lax in their MS Windows-oriented coverage. I enjoy their "Learning" "xxxprogramlanguage" series and some of their "essential" titles (essential system adminstration and any of their unix/linux titles come to mind), but that coverage level does not exist in this MOM overview. I wish I had this book when I first setup MOM management packs, rules, scopes and other management framework integration (that's the "2 stars"). But for the admin who has MOM up-and-running, the book lacks good extensibility coverage. The MOM Reporting Services chapter is light. For real meat and potatoes coverage of MOM (leveraging scripts to find alert culprits, creating custom tasks, setting and using state variables, other creative scripts, extending reporting services) look to microsoft newsgroups and various web sites - because that type of "adminfoo" schooling is lacking in this book. Little coverage of the resource kit (v1 or v2 - the alert to rss utility here is awesome - but not covered in book) is quite an oversight (though there is good coverage of using eventcreator.exe to test rules). Perhaps I should've waited for second printing of this book - cause this doesn't cut the mustard - yet. MOM just may be the most "deep" application MS has created outside of their own OS code - and this book gives 341 pages (mucho screenshots) to what easily could have been double the "essential" topic coverage.

I had now purchased both of the available MOM books, both seem to cover roughly the same material, but neither really has any meat to it! I would have given this 3 stars, but unfortunately, the author makes a boring topic even more boring.

Not sure why the previous reviewers gave this a less than 4 start review. It clearly says in the first few pages: "Who Should Read This Book...I wrote this book with the first-time MOM administrator in mind."

So to expect the author to start talking about "extensibility" and other stuff that go beyond simply installing the more common management packs and getting the system monitoring working adequately for first time users might be a bit of an unfair assessment.

Here's the low-down on the contents as per the author:

"What's in This Book? This book is divided into three parts.

Part I, "Introducing Operations Management and MOM 2005," brings you up to speed on the basic concepts of operations management and how to get MOM 2005 up and running in your environment.

Part II, "Managing and Using MOM on a Daily Basis," takes you through the components and tasks that you'll be working with most often as an administrator.

Part III, "MOM 2005 Enterprise Integration," discusses the specific issues you'll encounter when using MOM in a larger environment, with a variety of platforms."

I guess the answer's in the title: "Essential Microsoft Operations Manager" (i.e. enough to get you started). Read this to become knowledgeable in whether your environment can benefit from this technology. Look elsewhere if you're already running MOM and you want to get funky with customizations

This is a great book to get up and running with MOM 2005. After reading this, I suggest reading Microsoft(R) Operations Manager 2005 Unleashed (MOM): With A Preview of Operations Manager 2007 (Unleashed) to really solidify these concepts and fill in the gaps.

Well written, supply the technical information needed. Little long prolog but in the end well written and easy readable.

I just don't understand how can anyone rate an "essentials" book not good enough for not having enough details or "beef" in it. I have to give it 5 stars to make it fair. This book is great if you are absolutely new to MOM, it will get you there to install it and customize it at a basic level. I believe that the author gives you enough detail to let you drive on your own after this test drive. It really made my implementation easier, I gave the book to a coworker and he had about my same views. Just remember, if you are not new to MOM look somewhere else.

I was excited to see that a MOM 2005 book was finally published. The documentation from MS is pretty superficial. While this book seems to cover the basics pretty well, it doesn't seem to cover the details or much beyond explaining the basic functions. For example, it barely mentions the Performance monitoring aspect of MOM--pretty frustrating if you need that info. It also doesn't go much into alerting and the details of paging technicians. Overall it's an okay HowTo but it could have been more.

Are you a first-time MOM administrator? If you are, then this book is for you. Author Chris Fox, has done an outstanding job of writing a book that gives you what you must know in order to have a solid foundation for planning, implementing, and administering MOM 2005.

Fox, begins by bringing you up to speed on the basic concepts of operations management and how to get MOM 2005 up and running in your environment. Then, the author takes you through the components and tasks that you'll be working with most often as an administrator. Finally, he discusses the specific issues you'll encounter when using MOM in a larger environment, with a variety of platforms.

This most excellent book will help you get your job done. More importantly, this book helps you deploy MOM 2005 in large enterprises with heterogeneous platforms.