Extending the SCOM CMDB to better manage IT infrastructure
Join Matthew Long and Ashley Thompson as they take a look at extending the SCOM CMDB with additional information that may be useful for the management of IT Infrastructure.
A common modification you can make to SCOM is to add additional properties to SCOM objects (such as tagging computers with the owner, application it serves or site location). Doing so allows you to create dynamically populating SCOM groups based on those attributes, which can then be used to target overrides, monitoring configuration and of course dashboards.
Ashley shows us how SquaredUp internally have extended SCOM with some registry key tagging, which allows them to create dashboards and perspectives in SquaredUp that automatically update as new systems are brought online or decommissioned. The keys can easily be updated via a SCOM task that makes it easy to either manage the life-cycle of a machine (moving a machine between environments) or correct tagging issues (such as someone not following a naming convention!).
You can download the accompanying slides here.
Check out the links below for resources Ashley found useful when building this MP, as he was new to both MP authoring and PowerShell scripting.
We've also included a copy of the MP on Github as a sample, so you can see under the covers how it all works. Please be aware there is *no* support provided from SquaredUp for this - it's just there to get you started in your own endeavours.
