Using System Center Operations Manager and Spotlight to Solve Real-World Operational Challenges

IT professionals responsible for managing the availability and performance of enterprise servers and applications are challenged with two distinct tasks:

• Finding a core problem within their infrastructure before it becomes a major problem
• Resolving, as soon as possible, the underlying configuration issue or failure point that led to the problem

Administrators with both a 24x7 monitoring solution and a focused diagnostic tool for managing their environment can find and fix issues faster and with more confidence, resulting in a greater likelihood for meeting service level agreements (SLAs). This document explains how two such tools can work together to help administrators ensure high availability and performance:

• Microsoft® System Center Operations Manager, an event and performance management solution. Note: the information here also applies to Microsoft Operations Manager.
• Quest® Software’s Spotlight, an advanced real-time troubleshooting tool.