Basic MOM Structure
The functional unit of a MOM 2005 implementation is a management group. All management groups consist of an operations database , one or more management servers, one or more managed computers, the Administrator console, and the Operator console. Figure 1-1 shows the minimum components of a MOM 2005 management group.

Figure 1-1. A basic MOM 2005 management group
The operations database maintains all the settings that define the configuration of the management group. It also stores the live or operational data that has been collected by the agents until it is groomed out by automated SQL jobs when the data is no longer useful or to free-up database space. The database can be Microsoft SQL Server 2000 with SP3A or MSDE—the desktop version of the SQL database for smaller test installations.
The management server performs all the centralized tasks for the management group. It deploys and manages agents, and it proxies communication between the database, the agents, and the user consoles. In addition, all configuration tasks for the management group are performed on the management server, including rule management.
Managed computers are machines that are monitored by the management group and most of them will have agents installed. But MOM 2005 can also monitor a limited number of computers in an agentless fashion, which means that the monitoring of a remote computer is ...