Resource Pools were added in Operations Manager 2012. As a quick definition for what they are: “A resource pool is a collection of management servers used to distribute work amongst themselves and take over work from a failed member.” – subset from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh230706.aspx. I would update that slightly to the following definition based upon this discussion that a gateway can also be a member of a resource pool: http://www.systemcentercentral.com/BlogDetails/tabid/143/IndexID/94138/Default.aspx . “A resource pool is a collection of management servers and/or gateway servers used to distribute work amongst themselves and take over work from a failed member.”
Per Kris Bash:
Gateways and Management Servers should not be mixed in pools though. For UNIX/Linux monitoring, the same certificate "trust" configuration must be set up for pools of Gateways and pools of Management Servers: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh287152.aspx
Key features that Resource Pools can provide:
The All Management Servers Resource Pool, Notifications Resource Pool and AD Assignment Resource Pool perform a variety of functions discussed as part of: http://www.systemcentercentral.com/BlogDetails/tabid/143/IndexID/91085/Default.aspx. There are additional functions which resource pools can provide for Network devices, Unix/Linux agents and as Watcher nodes.
Network device: In OpsMgr 2012 a resource pool can be defined to include management servers which will provide monitoring for network devices to provide failover when a management server is offline. Network devices are discovered from a specific management server or gateway server but report to a resource pool as shown below:
Unix/Linux agent: In OpsMgr 2012 a resource pool can be defined to include management servers which will provide monitoring for Unix/Linux systems to provide failover when a management server is offline. The figure below shows how a Unix/Linux agent can be pointed to a different resource pool:
Watcher nodes: In OpsMgr 2012 a resource pool can be used for Web Application Availability Monitoring. To provide a highly available watcher node, create a resource pool with multiple management servers in a location and use the resource pool as the Internal location as shown below:
What Resource Pools do NOT do:
Item #1: Windows agents in OpsMgr 2012 do NOT report to a resource pool – they still communicate with a specific management server. AD integration and agent failover are still relevant for Windows agents. An example of how agents are discovered is shown below with options to point to the list of available management servers in the management group.
Windows Agents are assigned to a management server (shown below) not a resource pool:
Item #2: Application Performance Monitoring (APM) cannot currently be directed to report to a dedicated resource pool.
Item #3: Gateway servers cannot be configured to point to a resource pool.
Item #4: You cannot create a resource pool for console connections. Role based access control is done by ANY SDK Service when you connect to it. Any management server although you can control which management server (as with some other SDK activity) via Load Balancing. To use load balancing provide users with the virtual name of the Management Server load-balancing pool and just add management servers into and out of the resource pool on the load balancer.
Item #5: Resource pools cannot provide agentless monitoring for systems in OpsMgr 2012. Agentless monitoring is configured by setting the proxy agent from another Windows computer as shown below:
Item #6: Other synthetic transactions types such as Web Application Transaction Monitoring and TCP port monitoring do not connect to resource pools as the watcher nodes.
Additional Readings:
What does the RMSe actually do? http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/cfuller/archive/2012/01/11/what-does-the-root-management-server-emulator-rmse-actually-do-in-opsmgr-scom.aspx?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed
How does Windows agent failover work? http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/cfuller/archive/2012/06/05/how-does-the-failover-process-work-in-opsmgr-2012-scom-sysctr.aspx
Changing membership of resource pools: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/cfuller/archive/2012/07/24/automatic-and-manual-resource-pools-in-operations-manager-2012-scom-sysctr.aspx
Can a gateway server be a member of a resource pool? http://www.systemcentercentral.com/BlogDetails/tabid/143/IndexID/94138/Default.aspx
How to create a resource pool: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh230706.aspx