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SCOM: Difference between Sealed and Unsealed MP

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This question is seen many times on Forums and Blogs comments.

Introduction

First we will discuss what is an MP in SCOM:

*"Management packs typically contain monitoring settings for applications and services. After a management pack is imported into a management group, System Center Operations Manager immediately begins monitoring objects based on default configurations and thresholds that are set by the management pack." *

A MP is something which tells SCOM "what you need to look for and how you need to for" Mp can contains Discoveries , Class, Monitor, Rule, Object, Group anything which can be use in SCOM. 

Since MP is written in XML so all and everything has its own tag and it contains all its workflow under these tags. And these tag opens by writer in MP and closed by the writer to terminate the workflow.  E.g. :- Rule has tags <Rule> ( open Tag ) and </Rule> ( closure Tag ). This / indicates that this particular tag has been closed now and its flow will not work after this line. An sealed MP has a extension is .MP and unsealed MP has the extension is **.XML and .MPB **

The difference between Sealed MP and Unsealed MP

A sealed management pack is a binary file that cannot be edited. An unsealed management pack is an XML file that can be edited. 

In general, management packs obtained from an application or hardware device vendor are sealed beacuse they have tested them as much as possible and coded in very effective manner so correction required very less in them.

Although you cannot change the settings in a sealed management pack, you can still customize the applied settings of a management pack after it is imported by using overrides or by creating additional settings such as rules, monitors, and tasks that supersede the management pack's default settings and can save them into an unsealed MP. 

In general, All customization that you create are saved to a separate management pack file.

Some interesting facts:

Management packs can only reference another management pack if the management pack that is referenced is sealed.

We can only use Group, Class, Object created in an unsealed MP in that same MP not in another unsealed MP.