Operations Manager R2 and Service Level Dashboard 2.0

The Service Level Dashboard is one of those features that can be very helpful in terms of providing a high level view on a service or environment.  For this post I'm going to point you in the right direction in terms of installing and configuring the accelerator because there are a couple of things you need to watch when setting it up and I've been seeing a fair number of people getting tripped up and loosing a lot of hours to redoing the installation.

Setting the SLD up involves a few steps, and it is important to do them in the correct order:

1. Download the Service Level Dashboard 2.0 zip file from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1d9d709f-9628-46a8-952b-a78f5dd2bdd9&displaylang=en
2. Install SQLServer
3. Install SharePoint using a full SQL Server Database for the backend.  By default SharePoint installs using the Office Embedded version of SQL Server and this is not robust enough for the Dashboard server.
4. Import the Service Level Dashboard MP in OpsMgr
5. Run the Service Level Dashboard installer on the Sharepoint server.

Installing SQL Server and SharePoint

The main trick here is to do a complete install instead of a Stand-Alone install which will allow you to specify the database to use with your MOSS 2007 installation.

To set this part up I found a nice post by Andreas Glaser that walked through all the necessary steps to get this working with Win2K8, SQL 2008 and MOSS 2007: http://andreasglaser.net/post/2008/08/14/Installing-MOSS-2007-on-Windows-Server-2008-and-SQL-Server-2008-Part-1-Overview.aspx

Installing the Service Level Dashboard

For this side of things the User Guide included in the zip file is quite good, just make sure you run the installer as an administrator and you import the Management Pack before running the SLD installer as the MP import will create some stored procedures in the database.

Comments

[omkar umarani]

which part of sharepoint server i have to install before configuring the dashboard.

[Michael Guthrie]

You have to first install SQL Server, then do a complete install of Sharepoint so that you can specify the SQL Server database to use. You can't do a Stand-Alone install as that will default to using the Office Embedded version of SQL Server and SLD does not support it.