In the RTM release of Operations Manager 2007, you have likely noticed that the Enable Audit Collection task does not appear in the Actions pane when the RMS or a Management Server is selected. This task enables the Audit Collection Forwarder service (which is disabled on agent-managed computers by default) and sets the appropriate values in the registry.

In fact, the Audit Collection Forwarder service is not even installed on a Management Server.

Enabling the ACS Forwarder service on a Mgmt Server is a new feature in SP1, but it turns out, there is actually a way to do this in the RTM release. Credit Jeff Skelton for working through how to do this when MS Support told him it was not possible. While obviously unsupported, I did work through Jeff’s solution in the lab and it seems to work as expected.

Steps for Enabling the ACS Forwarder Role on an Management Server

1. Copy adtagent.exe to C:\windows\system32
2. Run adtagent -install
3. Edit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\AdtAgent\Parameters
   • Ensure DWORD key EventlogLoggingLevel is set to 2
   • Add DWORD key LocalConfig and set to 2
   • Add DWORD key NoCache and set to 2
   • Add Multi-String Value key AdtServers and enter name of the collector to
     forward to.
4. In Services CP, set Operations Manager Audit Forwarding Service to Automatic and start.
5. Verify by running SELECT * FROM dbo.dtMachine on the OperationsManagerAC database and finding the management server name. You could also run SELECT * FROM dbo.dtMachine WHERE Description = ‘DOMAINNAMEHERE\MACHINENAMEHERE$

Nice work Jeff!