Availability Reporting MP - 4th time's a charm???

They say love is better the 2nd time around. For Availability Reporting, the formula is something slightly higher than that.   For those of you who haven't yet attempted to deploy the MOM Availability Reporting Pack, another issue popped up in the newsgroups with the early adopters. I just deployed after a few days of watching.  I'll simply point you to Clive's blog for the unofficial gold code (unofficial release 05.0.5000.0001 available HERE) along with some background on what has been seen. Clive to the rescue (again).   I do want to point out some important deployment tidbits and considerations prior to deployment to set expectations in line with reality.   Computer Group to Rule Group Association This has always been a point of much confusion with this MP, and Clive again offered advice (on the MOM mailing list) as to the rules of the road in associating computer groups in a way that will result in successful report generation.   "I just wanted to make sure it is clear that the computer groups assigned (it doesn't matter what they are, they can be custom computer groups with just the server you wish availability data from assigned) must be assigned at the rule group Microsoft Availability Reporting Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005. This Rule Group having the GUID {F9B1F301-FF22-434B-A545-9E43C96DB1B3}. If you assign rule groups to child rule groups you will not have availability data generated by the MRASLoader and therefore no reports :)"   Product Limitations   There are some known limitations related to data collection and processing you should be aware of prior to diving in as well, as mentioned in the Availability Reporting Release Notes (relnotes.htm in the install directory) Availability and Reliability reporting is only supported on US English versions of Windows due to collection of certain events from those systems requiring US English string comparison. Generation of reports for Application = Domain Controller (DC) is not supported where domain controllers are running Windows 2000. Domain Controller availability reporting is only supported where Domain Controllers are running the Windows Server 2003 operating system. When viewing the Availability for the Application = SQL Server, the Application Version is not displayed for servers running SQL Server 2005. If the SQL Server was upgraded from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005 the Application Version displayed may be the old SQL Server version. Although support has been added for installation of the Availability Reporting Management Pack on a MOM Reporting database server running SQL Server 2005 the management pack does not support reporting of the Application Version for SQL Server 2005 availability. While the format of the report output in terms of its suitability as a deliverable to IT management is subject to some discussion, it is the best MS-delivered system / service availability option for MOM 2005 at this point. And it sure beats nothing at all.