Finding management packs

Up to this point we've given you an overview of what a management pack is and we took a quick look under the hood to understand the elements they can contain. In this section we'll give you some options and tips on where best to track down the management packs that you need for your environment.

Although they all share the same file types (.mp, .xml), the configuration of each management pack is unique and you need to understand what exactly the management pack can and cannot monitor by default. To help you gain a better understanding of what a management pack can do, most vendors and community authors provide an associated guide (user manual) and it's imperative that you have access to this guide when you locate and download the management pack.

To find management packs, you could just use your favorite Internet search engine and trawl through endless links to locate the latest version of the particular management pack you're looking for, or you could use one of the...