How do you monitor web services using SCOM, specifically 2012 R2?
Both that it's responding, and even better, that the response is actually correct?
The web services are pretty varied, so we have some hosted in Azure, some local .NET WCF services and even some Oracle WebLogic ones
The answer depends on your "actually correct" substance. If you need to do an analysis of JSON to distinguish correct and incorrect answers, you'll need to write rule or monitor with script/managed datasource. If you have SCOM2012 I'd recommend managed C# datasource, because it allows parsing JSON very easy using standard libraries and implement even pretty complex analysis to check if the response is correct. If you have SCOM 2007R2 or older you'll need to use PS script to do that and it may take some more time (or less if you are PS guru :)).
but...
...if you don't want to go so deep in SCOM development, here is a very simple way to do that without MP authoring. SCOM 2007R2 and newer versions have "Web Application Availability Monitoring" template wizard. Just go to the "Authoring" pane, then to "Management Pack Templates" folder, choose "Web Application Availability Monitoring" and configure your monitor using that wizard. It will allow you to create dedicated monitors for specific methods of your web service. The whole process is explained in more details there: http://www.opsmanfan.com/index.php/6-use-scom-2012-to-monitor-a-webapi-without-using-scripts
Good luck! Roman
