Getting started with policies

This section is designed to get you up and running with TrueSight Middleware and Transaction Monitor (TMTM) policies.

There are basically three steps you need to follow when working with policies:

Step 1: Select the monitored technology

In the Monitor Console, navigate to the Policies tab and select the Agent Policies sub-tab. In this tab (as shown below) you can see a series of Agent Policies with names like WMQ_Agents_Basic. The naming convention for the BMC supplied Policies is TECHNOLOGY_Agents_LEVEL, where TECHNOLOGY is an abbreviation for the specific monitored product to which the policy applies. 

Immediately after installation of the Middleware Monitor server, you will see the policies for IBM WebSphere MQ (prefixed with WMQ) and the self-monitoring policies for TMTM (prefixed with BMM). If you are only monitoring these technologies, you can proceed to Step 2.

If you are monitoring other technologies, then you need to import the Event Packs before  proceeding. The Event Packs include policies for additional monitored technologies, including IBM Integration Bus/WebSphere Message Broker, IBM DataPower, BMC MainView for WebSphere MQ, IBM WebSphere Application Server, IBM HTTP Server, TIBCO EMS, TIBCO Rendezvous, and Oracle WebLogic Server.

Step 2: Select the required level of monitoring

For each technology, the supplied policies come with a number of monitoring levels: 

• Minimal - This level ensures there is almost no automatic monitoring, although will automatically keep history on the BMM Agent and the top level component of the technology (for example, the MQ Queue Manager, IIB Broker, or EMS Server), and will provide Console alerts if the monitoring extension has lost contact with the underlying technology. Choose this level if you wish to control your monitoring mostly manually (as in previous versions of TMTM) rather than automatically, but need to ensure the absolute core is monitored.
• Basic - This level does everything the Minimal level monitors, but also discovers and selects for monitoring the underlying objects (such as MQ queues and channels, Broker Message Flows, WAS EJBs, and DataPower Multi-Protocol Gateways). In addition, it stores history on the key metrics of those objects. Note that this level does not alert automatically, other than the minimal Console alerts on the BMM self-monitoring. Choose this level if you want to ensure that objects are discovered and populated in the Operations tab of the Monitor Console automatically but wish to manage your events manually.
• Standard_NNN - This level is intended to implement TMTM best practices for monitoring. The monitored objects are discovered and populated in the Monitor Console Operations tab. Historical data is collected on all key metrics, and alerts are set up automatically to notify you of key conditions for all monitored objects. As this level includes alerting, there are several variants specified by the NNN to control where the event notifications go. 
  
  If you are using TrueSight Operations Management (or the older BMC ProactiveNet Performance Management or BMC Event Manager), then you should choose the _BEM variant. The _EMail variant will send event notifications via email.  The _LogToFile variant will write the event notifications to a specified log file.
  
  Note that all of these eventing options will require some general configuration. 
  • For the BEM variant, you must configure BMC Event and Impact Integration. 
  • For the _EMail variant, you must configure the target email server and recipient in the EMail_Generic Event Action (In Edit mode in the Monitor Console, select the Events tab, then select the Actions sub tab. From the list of Actions, select the EMail_Generic action pipeline, right-click on the email action and select Properties. Enter the SMTP Host, SMTP Port, Sender, To, CC, and BCC information. Click OK and then click the Commit button). For further details, see Defining events, triggers, and actions.
  • For the _LogToFile variant, you must specify the target log file by editing the LogToFile_Generic Event Action (In Edit mode in the Monitor Console, select the Events tab, then select the Actions sub tab. From the list of Actions, select the LogToFile_Generic action pipeline, right-click on the File Message action and select Properties. Enter the intended path and file name for the log file. Click OK and then click the Commit button). For further details, see Defining events, triggers, and actions.
• ALL_NNN - This level monitors and stores historical data on all objects and alerts on essentially every condition that TrueSight Middleware and Transaction Monitor believes could be of interest. As with the Standard_NNN level, there are _BEM, _EMail, and _LogToFile variants. Choose this policy in an environment where you wish to explore the possible monitoring capabilities. It is generally not recommended that you select this policy level in a production environment because it may generate a large number of alerts.

Step 3: Copy and enable the policy

Once you have selected your technology and monitoring level, go to the Agent Policies list (as shown above) and select the appropriate policy. 

Then click the Copy Agent Policy with all Sub-Components button  (also known as a Deep Copy), and specify a prefix for your copy (such as "MyCompany_"). Click OK to copy and enable the policy and all required underlying objects. 

The last step is to apply the policy to your existing objects by clicking the Apply button . 

Note that policies will apply to new objects in the future, but this step is necessary to check all of the existing objects that were discovered before you applied your policy. The following dialog box displays what the policy has done. Upon completion, you can exit the dialog box. 

Where to go from here

Your next step will depend on the stage of your setup:

• If you are new to TMTM and have not deployed and started any agents, this would be the next step. The policy will pick up the new objects and configure the monitoring setup based on the policy.
• Whether you are new or an existing user, if you have deployed and started any agents, you can run the ‘Test Agent Policy’ to confirm the objects this policy would apply to. Or you can run the ‘Apply Agent Policy’ to apply the policy to all the existing objects (that match the policy expressions). Note that if the policy has a Schedule component, you can wait for the schedule to automatically apply the policy.