Essential Microsoft Operations Manager

Summary

In MOM 2005, agents are the intelligent data miners that perform most of the real work. By performing most of the pattern matching between the processing rules and the collected data locally, rather than just pushing raw data up to the management server for processing, agents increase the overall performance of MOM 2005. Besides collecting data, agents also perform actions on the managed computer when a processing rule response instructs them to do so. The agent runs the responses under a different process (MOMHost.exe) and security context (agent action account) to protect the agent service (MOMService.exe) from hung scripts or other poorly executed actions that could impede its function.

In MOM 2005, when agent code is installed locally on a computer, that computer is said to be “agent-managed.” MOM 2005 can also perform monitoring on a computer via the management server agent, which is called “agentless monitoring.” MOM 2005 agents can be deployed to and manage computers that are in a wide range of network and security environments, including across firewalls and slow WAN links and into trusted domains or untrusted domains and workgroups. This can be done remotely from the management server or locally on the target computer via a manual installation process.

MOM 2005 agents can execute the monitoring requirements of multiple management groups simultaneously and will failover automatically between management servers that are in the same management group in case of agent-to-management ...