Service Manager allows to build a comprehensive CMDB by using connectors. One very important connector is the SCOM CI connector (System Center Operations Manager) that allows objects that are discovered and monitored by SCOM to be synchronized with the Service Manager CMDB. This is very important because Service Manager itself does not have a discovery engine. So one thing you have to deal with is bringing already discovered objects from SCOM to Service Manager – automatically!

SCOM uses the same types of Management Packs that Service Manager uses, both products are based on the System Center Common platform. Travis Wright has written some articles on his blog about the platform, so I will not go into details here. But important is the fact that most Management Packs contain classes in which objects can be instantiated. A class has several attributes and all objects of a class have exactly the same attributes. One example of a class is “SQL Database” which has attributes like “Display Name”, “Database Size” and “Recovery Model” (and of course many more). To find objects, SCOM uses special kinds of rules called discoveries that run on a scheduled basis on every system that contains a SCOM agent. If the discovery process finds a SQL Database, an object is instantiated in the “SQL Database” class that represents the SQL Database. After successful discovery, SCOM starts to monitor the database.

Now, if we want to manage SQL Databases in Service Manager we have to do multiple things. First, the “SQL Database” class must be known by Service Manager. This is done by importing the Management Pack that holds the class definition into Service Manager. Some Management Packs are present in Service Manager by default, others are not. So first we have to check if the Management Pack is present. But wait … what Management Pack holds the class we want to use in Service Manager, in this case “SQL Database”? This is easy to find out. In SCOM you can use the view “Discovered Inventory” display objects of a specific class, and you can find out which Management Pack holds the class definition.

As you can see, the SQL Database class definition comes from a Management Pack called “SQL Server Core Library”. That means that we have to import exactly this Management Pack into Service Manager (as it is not one of the Management Packs that are installed by default). You can download the Management Pack from the Management Pack Catalog. Find the correct mp file and import it using the Service Manager Console.

Now as the SQL Database class is known by Service Manager, we have to configure the SCOM CI connector to synchronize objects of that class. In the details of the SCOM CI connector we have to mark the newly imported Management Pack for synchronization. Click the refresh button to make the Management Pack visible.

After this reconfiguration of the connector, start the synchronization process. After a minute or two, the objects are synchronized. To make those new objects visible, we have to create a view and select the new SQL Database Class as target.

Select the SQL Database class because we want to display objects of this class.

Now select the fields that you want to display in the list view.

Complete the wizard and check the SQL database objects that are visible.

As you can see, it’s possible to synchronize all objects that live in SCOM to Service Manager, wow! This is somehow powerful as you don’t have to worry about manually creating objects in Service Manager. Indeed, some objects that you want to manage wont live in SCOM (e.g. furniture etc.) and you have to create those in Service Manager manually (after creating the classes), but the connector allows you to import most of the needed objects automatically. This is one of the reasons why i recommend using SCOM in conjunction with Service Manager.

In some cases it’s possible that the shown procedure does not work as expected and the view does not display any objects at all, even if you have exactly followed the steps above. Then, one more configuration step is needed. I will show you this step in the second Part in a day or two.

Have fun
Marcel