SCOM 2012 - Monitoring Pack for SharePoint 2010

In the last week Microsoft has released the latest updated OpsMgr/SCOM 2012 management pack for monitoring SharePoint 2010.

Prior to this release, if you wanted to monitor and manage your SharePoint farms with SCOM 2012 using a Microsoft produced management pack, you had to either be a Microsoft employee, on a System Center Technology Adoption Program (TAP) or have participated in the SCOM 2012 Community Evaluation Program (CEP).

Thankfully I had participated in the SCOM 2012 CEP back last October and had access to a pre-release version of this management pack that basically added an additional Admin task to the SCOM 2012 console that supported the discovery and monitoring of your SharePoint 2010 farms.

As the pre-release version of the management pack I had wasn't officially supported by Microsoft, to say I was waiting patiently for this fully supported one to be released is an understatement!

This blog post will walk you through the steps required to get this MP up and running.

Prerequisites

The original Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Management Pack for OpsMgr/SCOM 2007 must first be downloaded and imported into SCOM 2012 before installing this updated management pack and you can download it from here (make sure to download the guide too):

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=4419

Follow the instructions in the guide for the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Management Pack for SCOM 2007 to install and import it into your environment. Make sure you have configured your Run As accounts as per the guide recommendations as they will be required later in this process.

Installation

Once you have the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Management Pack for SCOM 2007 imported, you can now go about installing the updated management pack for SCOM 2012.

Download the System Center 2012 Monitoring Pack for SharePoint 2010 to a location on your SCOM 2012 server from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34697

When the management pack installer has been downloaded, right-click on the .msi and choose the Install option

Accept the license agreement, then click Next

At the Select Installation Folder dialog box, make a note of the default installation location and notice that it will deploy to the  'Program Files (x86)' directory (this is important to know for a later step), then click Next

Click Close to finish the initial installation of the extracted the files

Browse to the location that the installer recommended and make sure that you can see the 'Microsoft.SharePoint.2010.SCOM2012' directory as shown below

Double click on the folder and you should see the new 'Microsoft.SharePoint.2010.SCOM2012.mp' file inside as below

Now, this is where things can start to go wrong with this management pack if you're not careful.

From the original location of 'C:\Program Files (x86)\System Center Management Packs\Microsoft.SharePoint.2010.SCOM2012', copy the 'Microsoft.SharePoint.2010.SCOM2012.mp' file to the following location as shown in the screenshot below. (Note: The copied location is not in the (x86) folder):

'C:\Program Files\System Center Management Packs'

Once you have copied the management pack file from the (x86) folder to the new location, in the SCOM 2012 console, browse to the Administration tab from the Wunderbar, expand the Administration view, right-click on Management Packs and then choose the Import Management Packs option to start the wizard.

In the Import Management Packs wizard, choose the Add from Disk option and then browse to the new location that you copied the 'Microsoft.SharePoint.2010.SCOM2012.mp' file to. If you've followed the instructions above, this location will be 'C:\Program Files\System Center Management Packs'. Double click on the coped management pack file and you will then see something similar to the screenshot below.

Note: If you haven't met the prerequisites and first installed the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Management Pack for SCOM 2007, you will receive an error here stating that there is a dependency missing.

When you click on the Install button, you should then see confirmation that the new management pack has been imported successfully. Click the Close button to exit the dialog box.

Browse back to the Monitoring tab from the Wunderbar, expand the SharePoint 2010 Products view and then click on the Administration view. If all has gone according to plan, you should see your Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Farm Group in the central screen and on the right-hand side in the Tasks pane, you will now see the new 'Configure SharePoint Management Pack (SCOM 2012)' task as pointed out in the screen below

Click on the new task and you will be presented with the following dialog box - notice that the Working Directory value is set to: %ProgramFiles%\System Center Management Packs

It's this value that had the requirement for us to earlier copy the management pack file out of the (x86) directory and move it as without the file being copied, this task wouldn't run.

If you have correctly configured your Run As account for the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Management Pack for SCOM 2007 as per the guide recommendations, then you should be able to just click on the Run button inside this task.

 You will then be presented with the following screen confirming that the discovery of your SharePoint 2010 Farm Group has been successful. Note: Make sure to wait a while for the discovery process to complete in your environment as it won't always show up in the console immediately.

That's all that you should need to do to get up and running with your SharePoint 2010 monitoring using SCOM 2012.