News

Microsoft Releases Unix and Linux Monitoring Pack for System Center 2012

Solution provides reporting capabilities.

• By Kurt Mackie
• 08/06/2012

Microsoft has updated its monitoring pack for System Center 2012 running on Windows Server 2008. The solution provides reporting capabilities for Unix and Linux servers.

The "System Center Monitoring Pack for UNIX and Linux Operating Systems" was released in May but updated on July 24. It works with System Center 2012 running on Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 and is available at Microsoft's download center page here.

The monitoring pack can be used with System Center Operations Manager 2012 to check the "processes, resources, and server agents" of Unix and Linux servers, according to the company. It checks server health, availability, and performance and has reporting capabilities and views to enable "near real-time diagnosis and resolution of detected issues."

Supported Unix and Linux servers include IBM's AIX, HP-UX, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Oracle's Solaris, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

Microsoft's Unix and Linux monitoring pack also supports adding the "Audit Collection Services for UNIX/Linux Management Packs," according to Microsoft's description. This management pack works with System Center Operations Manager and can collect records based on audit policies set by IT pros, according to this TechNet library article.

It's also possible to run Unix and Linux scripts via Operations Manager 2012. According to a Microsoft forum post, that capability was integrated into the final Operations Manager 2012 product. When Microsoft released Operations Manager 2012 in November, it described the Unix and Linux scripting capabilities as happening through Microsoft's PowerShell scripting environment.

The System Center Monitoring Pack for UNIX and Linux Operating Systems can yet run on Windows Server 2012, which is currently only in its "release candidate" stage. Even the currently released System Center 2012 product isn't yet supported on Windows Server 2012, except via a service pack that's being tested. System Center 2012 and Windows Server 2012 will work together when Microsoft releases Service Pack 1 of System Center 2012.

Microsoft released its second community test preview of System Center 2012 SP1 in June and is planning a beta release for sometime in the second half of this year.

The final version of Windows Server 2012 is expected to be available in September.