So you just installed SCOM? Now you are excited to put it to use. One of the first things I wanted to do is to monitor a website. Here I will describe how you can do it quickly.

First some references:

1. Here is the official operations guide.
2. Here is a very useful post I followed.

Here is how I actually did it:

Step 1: Deploy an agent

1. Open the console and click on “Monitoring” on the left side (should have been already there).
2. Click the link Configure computers and devices…
3. On the Discovery Type page, click Windows computers and click next
4. Select Advanced discovery
5. Select Servers Only and click next
6. Select Browse for, and Click Browse button. Search for and select some servers to start with. Click Next.
7. Type a domain account which has local admin rights. We have a service account for this purpose.
8. Click Discover and it shows you the server name with a checkbox next to it.
9. Check the checkbox and allow it to install the agent.

Refer to http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh230731.aspx for further information.

Step 2: Import Management Packs:

Follow the instructions in this document. I chose to install these management packs, to start with:

• Windows Server 2003 Operating System
• Windows Server 2008 Operating System (Monitoring)
• Windows Server 2012 Operating System (Monitoring)
• SQL Server 2012 (Monitoring)

Step 3: Monitor a website

Ok, so I want to monitor a website. I wanna be notified as soon as it goes down. I followed this document to setup a new monitor for my website.

Step 4: Setup SCOM for sending email notifications

So now you have setup SCOM to monitor your website but you still need to setup SCOM to be able to send e-mail notifications in case the website goes down. Here is how:

Setup a notification channel

Click through Administration >> Notifications >> Channels >> New >> E-Mail (SMTP)

Complete the steps in the wizard, it is pretty self explanatory.

This will tell SCOM which SMTP server to use if it needs to send out an e-mail to you or any other e-mail ID.

Setup a Subscriber

Now you need to tell SCOM the e-mail ID of the people who need to get notifications.

Click through Administration >> Notifications >> Subscribers >> New >>

Complete the steps in the wizard, it is pretty self explanatory.

Step 5: Setup a subscription

Now you need to tell SCOM the situation in which it needs to send a notification e-mail ID out.

Click through Administration >> Notifications >> Subscriptions >> New >>

1. Give a subscription name and a detailed description and click next.
2. On the next page (subscription criteria) in the conditions box, check “raised by any instance in a specific group”
3. In the “criteria description” box click on specific and find “Web application availability monitor group” and click next
4. Click “add” and select subscriber and click next.
5. Select a channel (SMTP channel) and click next.
6. Click Finish.

Step 6: Test! Test! Test!

Now you need to test if SCOM is monitoring your website properly. For this, you need to:

1. Take down your website (stop IIS or whatever webserver you are running).
2. Wait for the time period specified in SCOM’s monitor.
3. See if you get an e-mail from SCOM.