Question: What if I do not want to monitor an application or service for a particular server? How can I stop this without overriding every rule and monitor for that server?

Answer: In the RTM release there was no good answer for this all too common situation. Sometimes you may not want to monitor all applications on a computer. However, once the instance of an object-type has been discovered (such as an Active Directory domain controller), rules and monitors are active and running shortly thereafter. In the RTM release of Operations Manager, this meant creating a tremendous number of disable overrides for all rules and monitors to stop unwanted alerts (not fun) or digging into the SDK (also in the ‘not fun’ category).

This was rectified in Service Pack 1 for Operations Manager 2007. In Service Pack 1, the Remove-DisabledMonitoringObject cmdlet was introduced to the Command Shell.

 To remove the discovery data for an object you do not want to monitor, perform the following steps:

1. Create a disable override for the target computer (or group of computers) for each object discovery you do not wish to run on the target computer. For example, to prevent SQL monitoring on SERVER1, go the Authoring space in the Operations console and create a disable override for each SQL object discovery for SERVER1.
2. Run Remove-DisabledMonitoringObject with no parameters. This will remove discovery data from the object discoveries for any objects for which you’ve disabled discovery.

Unwanted monitoring should cease shortly after execution of these steps.