Single service monitoring shows monitors on all servers in "uninitialized" state

Dashboard Server
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I have been tasked with monitoring custom services. I do so in SCOM by creating a monitor, adding service name, targeting Windows Servers and overriding the monitor to a specific server. In case a service(as a part of an application) moves to a different server, or that custom service is installed on several servers, I can easily override the monitor instead of creating a whole new monitor.

The problem with targeting Windows Servers, however, is that all the monitors pop up on every server we have in an “uninitialized” state in SquaredUp.

Another issue is that if the override is set to a server where the service is not present, the service is set to green when it clearly shouldn’t be.

Are there any ways to solve this?

EDIT: I am using SCOM 2012 R2

 

UPDATE:

I have tested several solutions and have found that using the “Windows Service” MP template is sufficient for monitoring the custom services. There is no discernible performance impact and adding a service once is sufficient, as the services are being discovered automatically on all servers.

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You can create a custom discovery for the application and then target that specific group.

http://www.bictt.com/blogs/bictt.php/2011/03/17/scom-monitoring-a-service-part4

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Pine, you did not mention which SCOM version you are using.

In SCOM 2012 R2, you can add a service to be monitored using the Windows Service template. It will setup a discovery to look for that service name only. This will only show the services as running on servers where it actually exists.

Then you can export the XML and modify it wildcard some services if you have a lot that have a similar name. See these websites for help with that.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/brianwren/archive/2008/03/07/using-wildcards-with-the-windows-service-template.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/archive/2011/01/20/how-to-monitor-a-service-with-unique-names-across-multiple-computers-using-a-wildcard.aspx

Something else to keep in mind is that if you choose to NOT turn on the monitors in the template, it still creates those monitors and rules, but they the enabled is set to "false". In the XML search for Rule.Enabled.Override and change the values from false to true. Then when you import the MP back into SCOM, you will have performance data (CPU and Mem) for those services that you can display on the dashboard as well.

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Is creating a service class the only way? I have ~180 applications where many have custom services that aren’t picked up by management packs or the SCOM agent. Can this be done with a Distributed Application as well perhaps? That would lower the amount of “uninitialized” monitors. This however brings me to the question if these uninitialized monitors have an impact on performance or is just a clutter.

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Thank you, this might work. I am indeed using SCOM 2012 R2. Most of the services have unique names in my case, so I doubt wildcarding will be very efficient, but it is useful knowledge nonetheless.

Seeing as I will be adding a lot of services, will there be a performance impact when using the service template over a monitor? Could this work on agentless servers?

I will test it out and mark this as answer if it worked correctly.