Introduction - FFSMP for SCOM 2007

  • Article

 

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 provides a way for you to monitor important applications and to be notified when there are issues with those applications that could result in degraded performance or complete loss of functionality. A Management Pack, primarily consisting of rules for alerts based on events and performance counters generated by applications, works within the Operations Manager 2007 framework.

The Microsoft Forefront™ Server Security Management Pack (FFSMP) is a collection of rules, tasks, and scripts that work within Operations Manager 2007. These rules, tasks, and scripts assist in the centralized management of systems that have Microsoft Forefront Security for Exchange Server installed. Remote servers are managed by means of Operations Manager 2007 "agents". Systems that have had agents installed are referred to as "agent-managed systems".

This document is a guide to the essential components, configuration, and usage of the Microsoft Forefront Server Security Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007. Additional information about Operations Manager 2007 is available at the Microsoft System Center Operations Manager TechCenter.

Key features

The Microsoft Forefront Server Security Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007

  • Provides:

    • Support for Operations Manager 2007 agent-managed systems running Forefront Security for Exchange Server.

    • Monitoring of the “health” of your agent-managed systems, informing you when they are running smoothly and when there are problems, both actual and potential. For example, you are notified if over half of your scan engines have failed to update or if it is determined that Forefront Security for Exchange Server is not hooked into the Exchange interfaces (that is, messages are not being scanned).

  • Contains rules for:

    • Monitoring the state of Forefront Security and its key components, by deriving data from the Application Event Log, the System Event Log, and the Forefront Security ProgramLog.txt log file.

    • Collecting statistical data on scanning, detection, and removal of message attachments.

  • Contains tasks for:

    • Immediately launching manual scan jobs.

    • Immediately launching a background scan job.

    • Controlling Forefront Security services and related services with dependencies.

    • Setting the Statistic Threshold Percentage to warn of virus outbreaks.

    • Triggering scan engine updates.

    • Retrieving scan engine update versions.

    • Launching the Administrator Console (FSSA) and the Management Console (FSSMC)