While at Microsoft TechEd IT Forum in Barcelona, I talked with Barry Shilmover (Senior Program Manager, System Center) about creating System Center management packs. Management packs are the sort of “plugin” parts of the System Center platform that do the discovery, monitoring, and management for System Center in addition to containing the help “knowledge.” Barry walks us through the life-cycle of a management pack when it’s executing – discovery, monitoring, and then executing management tasks as needed – and then walks us through an overview of how management packs are built. As he notes, the underlying model is based on Microsoft’s SDM, which Microsoft is using to create the SML standard.

Disclaimer: Microsoft’s STB group is a client and commissioned RedMonk to film the IT Forum videos.