How to create Availability Test Groups for use with Enterprise Applications

When you are configuring availability monitoring (see How to create an Enterprise Application) for an Enterprise Application(EA) (see Enterprise Applications) in the EA Designer you may need to select a group of test clients (watchers) to run the tests.

This group can simply be created in SCOM with the group name starting with EAM_, populated with Windows servers, and then it will show on the test from drop down list in the EA Designer.

All Windows servers in the group will then run the availability tests. For the test to be a close representation of whether the application really is available the test clients should be physically close to the end users who will be using the application.

When creating your groups you may like to:

• Configure one group of test clients for all of your applications
• Configure different groups for each application
• Configure groups for various locations to reflect user locations
• Have more than one test client in each group, so that if one watcher node goes down it doesn't cause the application to show as unavailable
• All or some of the above

For example, SquaredUp DS adds one availability test group named EAM_Default availability test clients with the root management server emulator as the member. Generally this server is in your data center, so tests running in this location are not a realistic test of availability. We recommend that you populate this default group, or any new test groups, with servers that are located where your users are located.

Creating a group of test clients

1. Open the SCOM Operations Console.
2. Go to the Authoring workspace (Authoring tab on the bottom left).
3. Click on Groups (left-hand tree view Authoring > Groups).
4. Click Create a New Group on the right-hand side.
5. Enter a name for the group, ensuring that the name starts with EAM_. It is this prefix that makes the group appear in the test from drop down list in the EA Designer.
6. Select a destination management pack from the list, or click New to create a new management pack.

7. Click next to add specific Windows servers or use SCOM dynamic membership rules (or both) to populate the group with the servers you wish to run the tests, as you would for any other SCOM group.

   The test clients must be Windows servers rather than Windows desktops.

8. Click create to finish creation of the new group.

This group will then appear in the test from drop down list when configuring availability tests for an EA. All Windows servers in the group will then run the tests when they are selected from the dropdown.

Troubleshooting Availability test groups

A group renamed to EAM_ is not appearing in the test from drop down list

You may be aware of the group rename bug in SCOM, and it should be noted that as a result of this bug renaming an existing group to add the EAM_ prefix does not make an existing group appear in the test from drop down list.

An EA is shown as available or unavailable when some users are finding otherwise

• Check that the test clients are located where your users are located.
• EAs use the rollup algorithm of Worst health state of any member, because this is the default and more sensitive rollup setting that users of SCOM are used to working with. Using this more sensitive setting ensures that any outage is reported. You may consider changing the rollup algorithm from worst to Best health state of any member so that if any one of the test clients can access the application then the application health shows as green. See How to edit Enterprise Application rollups.
• Check that there is more than one test client in the group, so that if one watcher node goes down it doesn't cause the application to show as unavailable.