You can use PATROL to schedule suspended states for applications and parameters. A suspended state, or blackout period, stops parameter collection and alarms for a specified amount of time. You can use this feature to ensure that maintenance or backups to the instance do not trigger erroneous alarms or reports.

Note

Blackouts can be overridden or terminated from outside PATROL for Oracle. During a Blackout period, the ORACLE_ETSM instances are turned off and the icons for ETSM disappear.

When you set a blackout period, you can schedule it to last for a few minutes, for hours, or for days. The blackout function does not use specific dates for scheduling, but uses the day of the week and the time of the day.

Example

You cannot schedule the blackout for Tuesday, July 21, at 2200 (10 p.m.), for four hours, but you can schedule the blackout for Tuesday at 2200 for four hours. Until the blackout period is deleted, the instance is blacked out every Tuesday at 2200 for four hours.

The blackout period is not affected by Daylight Saving Time (DST) because the blackout period is based on duration and not on time. For example, the blackout period for the KM starts at 1:55 A.M. on March 14, 2012 and lasts for 15 minutes. When DST starts at 2:00 A.M., the clock advances from 2:00 A.M. to 3:00 A.M., while the KM is in the blackout period. The blackout period ends when the 15 minutes are over, at 3:10 A.M.

Nesting blackout periods

You can also nest blackout periods. If you have a set regular maintenance blackout period, you can also set an emergency blackout period that begins during the maintenance blackout period. However, if the maintenance blackout period covers the emergency blackout period, the emergency blackout period is not activated.

The following figure shows the overlapping blackout periods. In this example, the emergency blackout period scheduled from Monday at 2300 (11 p.m.) to Tuesday 0300 (3 a.m.) is not activated because the maintenance blackout period covers the emergency blackout period. However, if the regular maintenance blackout period is deleted, the emergency blackout period is activated.

Blackout period priority

Scheduling unending blackouts

If you set a blackout period for seven days, you are putting the instance in an unending blackout. For example, if you set the blackout period to run on Monday for a duration of seven days, on the following Monday the blackout function sees the event that triggers the blackout period and again triggers the blackout. This cycle repeats until the blackout period is deleted.

Setting the time zone variable

The blackout function attempts to determine the time zone that you are in. If it cannot, you must insert the following variable and value in the INSTANCE application class:

variable name = ORABOTZ
value = GMT hours +_ difference_from_your_time zone

You must calculate the number of hours difference between your time and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). For example, to specify the difference from Houston in the U.S. central time zone, you would enter GMT +0600.

You can set this variable using a developer console only.

Setting blackout periods for categories and parameters

When you add a blackout period, all parameters in all categories for that instance do not collect any information or raise any warnings or alarms.

To set blackout periods for categories and parameters for an Oracle instance

Choose Blackout Instance(s) from the ORACLE menu, or KM Admin > Blackout from the INSTANCE menu for the instance that you want to black out.
Select the instances for which you want to set this blackout period if you selected the menu command from the ORACLE menu, and click Add a Blackout Period.
If you select more than one instance, all the selected instances are set for the blackout period. If you want different blackout periods for multiple instances, you must set each instance separately.
Select the day of the week when you want the blackout period to start. Enter the duration of the blackout period and select the time units from the menu.
Click Accept.
The blackout period is entered as an event.

To set blackout periods by using PATROL Configuration Manager, see Modifying the blackout configuration variable.

Deleting blackout periods

Choose Blackout Instance(s) from the ORACLE menu, or KM Admin > Blackout from the INSTANCE menu.
Select Delete a Blackout Period, select the blackout period from the Blackout period(s) to delete list box and click Accept.

Debugging blackouts

To debug a blackout, right-click the Oracle instance icon and choose KM Commands > KM Admin > Debug and set the Debug option to YES.

Scheduling blackouts