SCOM certificate monitoring now has an official management pack from Microsoft. SCOM keeps improving, sometimes through new versions of the product and sometimes through new management packs. In this post, I look at the new pack for monitoring certificates and CRLs on Windows servers and PKI.
From a community pack to official SCOM certificate monitoring
For years, most of us used the community management pack that Raphael Burri created. He still maintains it [on GitHub → existing GitHub link], and I have made small changes to it myself. However, many people in the community asked the Microsoft SCOM team for a supported pack. Now the team has built one, so certificate monitoring in SCOM finally has an official option.
What the Microsoft Certificate Monitoring Pack does
For the most part, the new pack works like the community version, because the SCOM team used it as an example. Still, they wrote the code completely from scratch. The pack also adds a screen in the SCOM Administration pane. There you can set up all discoveries and many other settings for certificate monitoring.
Read the guide and test the pack first
As with most management packs, you should read the guide that comes with it. Otherwise, SCOM certificate monitoring may not work the way you expect. At the time of writing (September 2022), the pack is a CTP version. In other words, it is a test version that Microsoft may still change based on feedback from the community and customers. For that reason, check the name and version of the pack before you download it. I also suggest that you always test new packs in a SCOM test environment first.
Supported versions and download
The SCOM certificate monitoring pack supports SCOM 2019 and SCOM 2022.
You can read on the Microsoft Tech Community, and you can get the pack from the Microsoft Download Center
If you run SCOM 2022, also see our posts on SCOM 2022 for related fixes and tips.
For another example of a pack that extends SCOM, read about Advanced Log File Monitoring with the NiCE Management Pack
Finally, enjoy the next stage of certificate monitoring in SCOM!
Bob Cornelissen