I saw a question about including a custom service in a distributed application. This is a short step by step guide to include a custom service into a distributed application.

First I created a new service at one of my machines, CODC01. The new service was named SuperService. This is a service created only for this test. Then I created a process to monitor that service

1. Start the console, go to Authoring, expand management pack templates, right-click Windows Service and choose “add monitoring wizard…”
2. Add Monitoring Wizard – Monitoring Type: Choose Windows Service and click Next
3. Add Monitoring Wizard – General Properties: Input name, description and choose a destination management pack, click Next
4. Add Monitoring Wizard – Service Name: Input the name of the service or browse to pick it up, then click Create

Now we need to create a distributed application including this new service

1. Start the console, go to Authoring, right-click Distributed Applications and choose to create a new
2. Distributed Application Designer: Input a name and a description for your new distributed application. Choose “Blank” as template, choose a management pack to store your distributed application and then click OK
3. Distributed Application Designer: If you now serach for a object, for example in my case I search for “Super” I will see my SuperService object. If I click “Add Component” and add a component group I can then drag and drog the SuperService object from the search result to the new component group.
4. Distributed Application Designer: Click save and then move over to the monitoring part of the console, click Distributed Applications, open your new distributed application. As you can see, your custom service is included.

Remeber that after you create a new object it can take some time before you can add it in the Distributed Application Designer.