System Center Essentials

Infobox Software
name = System Center Essentials



caption =
developer = Microsoft Corporation
latest_release_version = Essentials 2007
latest_release_date =
preview_version =
preview_date =
preview_url =
operating_system = Microsoft Windows
platform =
language = Multilingual
status = Active
support_status = Active
genre = Performance and event monitoring
license = MS-EULA
website = [http://www.microsoft.com/sce System Center Essentials 2007]

System Center Essentials (SCE or Essentials 2007), is a performance and event monitoring product from Microsoft targeting Windows systems for small and medium size businesses.

The product allows monitoring of server and client computers interconnected by one or more communications networks. Many Microsoft server products, such as Active Directory, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange Server can be monitored with SCE.

Central concepts

The basic idea is to place a piece of software, an "agent", on the computer to be monitored. The agent watches several sources on that computer, including the Windows Event Log, for specific events or "alerts" generated by the applications executing on the monitored computer. Upon alert occurrence and detection, the agent forwards the alert to the SCE server. This SCE server application maintains a database that includes a history of alerts. The SCE server applies filtering rules to alerts as they arrive; a rule can trigger some notification to a human, such as an e-mail or a pager message, or trigger some other workflow intended to correct the cause of the alert in an appropriate manner.

SCE uses the term "management pack" to refer to a set of filtering rules specific to some monitored application. While Microsoft and other software vendors make management packages available for their products, SCE also provides for authoring custom management packs. While an administrator role is needed to install agents, configure monitored computers and create management packs, rights to simply view the list of recent alerts can be given to any valid user account.

ee also

*Windows Server System
*Microsoft System Center
*Microsoft Systems Management Server

References