Management Pack Contents Question

Question

Hello,
I have recently became the owner of our SCSM 2012 R2 environment and the previous admin was all over the place with putting things in seemingly random management packs.  I am in the process of cleaning things up but at the same time I am afraid of removing
a management pack in case there is some "grenade" in it.
Is there an easy way to list or determine what is in each management pack?  Maybe a series of powershell scripts?  I have been searching on the internet for an answer and trying out a few commands myself but nothing seems to be what I am looking
for.
Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

Personally, I just look at the XML in the sql database.
select MPName, convert(xml,mpxml) from Managementpack with(nolock)
I'll assume your previous admin put things in unsealed MPs via the console.
In my opinion, the only grenade would be classes or relationships defined in the MP. Other than that, generally you can remove an MP and simply re-import it with no ill effects. Classes and relationships, when their MP is removed, also remove any data defined
in those classes/relationships. So, those are the ones to watch out for.
Unsealed MPs cannot be referenced by other MPs, so again, generally, the only affect removing an unsealed MP can have is removing stuff defined in that unsealed MP..which can be things like templates, views, console tasks, worfklow rules, notification subscriptions,
etc. So while some functionality may be removed (like a view is suddenly missing), re-importing the MP will put the view right back where it came from.
Anyway, I don't know of any simple powershell scripts to get a management pack's manifest (like: How many views are in this MP?), but I would look through your XML and catalog the views, templates, custom console tasks, custom workflows (which include notification
subscriptions) and groups&queues (which include custom classes). Then you can start eliminating the unnecessary stuff.
Incidentally, if you're simply trying to clean-up stuff that was created in the console, I recommend removing that stuff using the console..that way you won't have to deal with MPs at all. For example, if you want to get rid of a view that your previous
admin created, simply go to the view and run the "Delete View" task. You can do the same for templates, notification subscriptions, workflows, etc etc.
I apologize for rambling on quite a bit longer than was necessary :)