Network team is already monitoring our F5 BIG-IP devices using their special tools, why do I need BIG-IP visibility also in Microsoft SCOM?

So, your network team is already monitoring your F5 BIG-IP devices using their special network tools.

Case closed. Well, not really! It is still extremely valuable to have BIG-IP devices feed their availability and performance information into SCOM, too, for the benefit of your application teams and their monitoring efforts. While the network team is making sure devices are up and running, your SCOM and application experts are responsible for the health of applications that sit behind BIG-IP devices. An important part of their job is to understand whether the BIG-IP load balancing is correctly and fully using application servers .For example, if BIG-IP considers one of a load balanced application servers to be unavailable, it will stop sending users to that server. But no-one, except perhaps network engineers, will have any knowledge of that. The SCOM and application experts will consider application to be serviced in full capacity. It is only when you combine the BIG-IP load balancing health with the application health in SCOM, you get the full visibility into how available applications are to your end users. This unique combined perspective enables monitoring and application teams to do their job proactively, should issues occur.

F5 BIG-IP Management Pack diagram auto-discovers and visualizes health of a business application and its underlying application servers from the perspective of a BIG-IP device If you use SCOM to monitor applications that are load balanced by F5 BIG-IP devices, you need visibility across all application delivery layers: BIG-IP load balancing and application layers included. For more details check the latest video about the F5 BIG-IP Management Pack capabilities or give it a try and see for yourself with 45-day free licenses.