Creating a blackout policy

Using the Central Monitoring Administration console, the administrators can define and manage policies to black out a BMC PATROL Agent from performing certain actions such as blacking out data, events, or recovery actions. You can schedule a blackout policy based on a predefined time frame. You can also define a blackout policy that is always active for specific BMC PATROL Agents.

Before you begin

Review the Time frame and blackout policy creation best practices.

 To create or edit a blackout policy

1. In the navigation pane of the Central Monitoring Administration console, click the Policies drawer.
2. Expand Blackout, and select one of the following policy views:
   • All
   • Global
   • Tenant

3. Click Add, or select an existing policy and click Edit.

4. Provide the following details:

   Field	Instructions
   Name	Name for the policy. The policy names must be unique. In an environment with tenants, the policy names must be unique for a single tenant. It is a mandatory field.
   Description	(Optional) A brief description about the policy
   Enable policy	Indicates whether the policy is enabled or disabled. By default, the policy is enabled. If you disable a policy when you create it, the policy configurations are not applied to the BMC PATROL Agents and the Infrastructure Management Servers. If you disable any existing policy, the policy configurations are removed from the BMC PATROL Agents and the Infrastructure Management Servers, where the policy was applied.
   Associated User Group	Name of the user group that is associated with the BMC PATROL Agents as defined in the Authorization Profile or in the PATROL Agent ACLs. The policy is applicable to these PATROL Agents.
   Share Policy	Specify whether this policy is to be shared with the users across the associated user group or not. The shared policy can be viewed in READ-ONLY mode by other users of the associated user group.
   Precedence	Priority of the policy. Based on the precedence number you configure, the configuration is applied on the BMC PATROL Agents and Infrastructure Management Servers. The precedence number ranges from 0 to 999. The configuration from a policy with a higher precedence overrides the configuration from a policy with a lower precedence. The default value is 999. A lower number indicates a higher precedence. It is a mandatory field.

5. Click Next.

6. Configure the condition to select the BMC PATROL Agents on which you want to apply the policy. For information about configuring the condition, see Selecting an agent.

7. On the next page, specify the blackout information. The information that you can configure are listed in following table:

   Field	Description
   Data (TYPE_COLLECTION)	Selecting this option stops the BMC PATROL Agents from collecting data
   Events (TYPE_EVENT)	Selecting this option stops the BMC PATROL Agents from generating events
   Recovery Actions (TYPE_RECOVERY)	Selecting this option stops the BMC PATROL Agents from running recovery actions
   Do Not Send (TYPE_INSTANCE_BO_EVENT)	Selecting this option stops the BMC PATROL Agents from sending blackout start and stop events for the blacked out monitor instances. When you black out an agent, all the monitor instances are automatically blacked out, and this option allows you to stop the agent from sending start and stop events for each monitor instance.
   Scope Of Blackout	Select one of the following options: Complete Agent(s)—Indicates that the blackout is applicable to all the monitor instances on the BMC PATROL Agent Monitor Types and Instances—Indicates that the blackout is applicable to the specific monitor instances of the specific monitor types on the BMC PATROL Agent. If you select this option, you must specify the monitor types and instances. To specify the monitor types and instances, perform the following tasks: Click Add. In the Add Monitor Types and Instances dialog box, select a solution, its version, and a monitor type. In the Scope list, select one of the following options: Type—Indicates that the blackout policy applies to all the monitor instances of the monitor type Instances— Indicates that the blackout policy applies to the specific instances of the monitor type If you have selected Instance as the scope, in the Instance SID box, type the instance SID of the monitor type. You can also use regular expressions to search for multiple matching instances. If you use regular expressions to search for the matching instances, ensure that you have selected Is a Regular Expression. For a list of regular expressions that the BMC PATROL Agent supports, see Configuring BMC PATROL Agent thresholds. To add more monitor instances or monitor types, repeat step b through step d. Click Close. If you want to edit any of the monitor types or instances, in the Configured Monitor Types and Instances table, select any instance SID, and click Edit . In the Edit Monitor Types and Instances dialog box, you can edit the values, and click Update.

8. Click Finish.

After you save or update a blackout policy, the configuration is pushed to the selected BMC PATROL Agents.

Related topic

Defining a time frame for the blackout policies

Configuring BMC PATROL Agent thresholds