Excluding Disks from Monitoring in SCOM: Understanding Override Values

As a system administrator, it is essential to monitor the health and performance of your servers and disk partitions. However, sometimes you may want to exclude certain disks or partition from monitoring, especially when they do not contribute to the overall performance of the server. In this blog post, we will explore how to exclude disks from monitoring in System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) and understand the concept of override values.

The message “The disk partitions breaching threshold are: [Drive Name] – Free space MB/ – 7.94MB”

Recently, Arne from the System-Center-Team posted a question on how to exclude a specific disk partition from monitoring in SCOM. The message he received was “The disk partitions breaching threshold are: [Drive Name] – Free space MB/ – 7.94MB.” This message indicates that there is not enough free space on the specified disk partition, and it is breaching the threshold set in SCOM. However, Arne wants to exclude this particular disk partition from monitoring because it is a root disk and not essential for the server’s performance.

Creating an override for / does not work

Arne tried creating an override for the specific disk partition by specifying the path as “/,” but it did not work. The override value is only “/.” This led Arne to ask why the override for / does not work, and he sought help from the System-Center-Team.

Understanding override values in SCOM

In SCOM, an override value is a specific path or pattern that you can use to exclude certain disk partitions from monitoring. When you create an override value, SCOM will not monitor the specified partition or file system. However, it is essential to understand that overrides only apply to the specific partition or file system and do not affect other disks or partitions on the same server.

Override values are case-sensitive and use forward slashes (/) as a path separator. When specifying an override value, make sure to use the correct syntax to avoid any issues. For example, if you want to exclude the /boot partition, you would specify /boot/.

Why the override for / does not work?

Now that we understand what override values are and how they work in SCOM, let’s explore why the override for / does not work. The reason is that the path “/” is a special case in SCOM, and it cannot be used as an override value. The reason for this is that the root disk is always monitored by SCOM, and specifying an override value for the root disk would exclude all other disks on the server.

To resolve this issue, you can create overrides for specific disk partitions or file systems instead of using the root disk path (“/”). For example, if you want to exclude the /boot partition from monitoring, you can create an override value as follows:

Override Value: /boot/

This will exclude the /boot partition from monitoring, but it will not affect other disks or partitions on the server.

Conclusion

In conclusion, excluding disk partitions from monitoring in SCOM is a straightforward process using override values. However, it is essential to understand how override values work and why certain paths, such as “/,” cannot be used as override values. By following the best practices outlined in this blog post, you can effectively exclude unnecessary disk partitions from monitoring and focus on the performance of your critical servers.