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Management Pack for VMware for Microsoft's System Center Operations Manager 2007 is nworks' long name for a tool that provides strong VMware monitoring and management capabilities that ultimately are driven by Microsoft's management platform.
As the name implies, it requires Microsoft's System Center Operations Manager 2007, which in turn, requires a Windows 2000 SP4+ host (we used Windows 2003 Standard Server Edition). Although it can be installed spontaneously, we discovered that a bit of planning pays off, as nworks MP requires a comparatively sophisticated installation to pay of in eventual monitoring and management rewards.
It takes longer to install the Microsoft System Center portion than the nworks add-ons. Nworks MP connects as an add-on to System Center, or between System Center and VMware VirtuaICenter or VMware ESX directly An nworks Virtual Infrastructure Collector (VIC) connects to a VMware ESX Monitor to gather topological and inventory information. Collectors (each one for a different VMware host) are set up and configured for connectivity to System Center.
Once everything is installed (it took more than three hours to install both product sets with requisite updates), a wealth of information can be tracked and managed...