October 30, 2019
By Mike Sargent
Silect Software is proud to make available a free command-line tool for working with MPB files. MPBUtil is provided free, as-is and without any warrantee by Silect Software. The tool can be downloaded from:
https://silect.com/downloads/MPBUtil/MPBUtil.zip
MPB files are used in Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) to bundle one or more Management Packs (MPs) with other files used by that MP. For instance, an MP might reference SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) reports, image files, or even DLLs. With an MPB file, the MP and everything it needs are delivered in a single package.
The zip file includes MPBUtil.exe and ReadMe.txt, which gives a summary of the operations. With MPBUtil you can list the contents of existing MPB files, extract those contents, or even create new MPB files. Using a combination of extract and create, you can update the contents of an MPB file (the underlying APIs do not allow us to update in place).
Let’s list the contents of an MPB file:
If we want more details, we can use the -Verbose option:
We can extract the contents of an MPB file (but note that sealed MPs can only be saved as unsealed XML files due to API limitations, so if you need sealed MPs, you will need to reseal or use an existing sealed copy of the MP):
And finally, we can create a new MPB file. To create an MPB file, the API requires access to a management group, or a folder with MP files in it. If you can connect to a management server with the current credentials, you can use the -Server flag, otherwise easier to specify a folder full of MPs.
We hope you will find this tool useful.
