How to create a custom service monitor and automatically restart it

For this little demo, we will be using the Print Spooler service and targeting Windows Operating System

This will target all version of Server and Client OS but I won’t go into rollups here

In SCOM Console

Authoring > Monitors > Create a Monitor > Unit Monitor

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Take a look at the varying out of the box options, many different monitor types available.

We select > Basic Service Monitor

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Make sure you choose an appropriate Management Pack to save the monitor into.

I recommend having a Custom Management Pack per Imported Management Pack to ensure you don’t cross the streams…

For this demo in my lab I am choosing my capture all monitors management pack

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Enter a distinguishable name that meets your naming convention.

Select the Monitor Target

Choose parent monitor

And I recommend you disable the monitor by default

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Search and select the class target

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Enter the service name or ideally search for it.

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Choose the computer name you know has the service you are targeting to get the correct name

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The monitor conditions for service monitors are static

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Enable the Alerts and Auto resolve.

Check the Alert name and align the priority and severity accordingly

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Click Create

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Ok, great… The Monitor and Alert is created.

Next is to create the recovery task.

Find the newly created Monitor

notice I have limited my search scope to the management pack object defined in the monitor

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Right-click and choose properties.

The pertinent tab is the Diagnostic and Recovery tab

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Add > Recovery for critical health state

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Choose Run Command

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Define the name. Again follow your naming conventions and keep it clear

For this task, I am opting to recalculate monitor state

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To start a service, we need to run the ‘net start %servicename%’

Hint: not sure on the command.. run it from cmd on a server with the service… i.e. ‘net start spooler’ is the pertinent command.

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Create!

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After a moment, the task will appear in the recovery tasks field

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Ok…

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Daniel Apps

Hi, I'm Daniel Apps — AI platform enthusiast, unapologetic infrastructure nerd, and dad to two small humans. I write about infrastructure, AI industry topics, and the real-world chaos of modern IT.

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