User goals and features

BMC PATROL for Windows Servers provides the following key features:

• Centralized event filtering and notification: This ability enables you to use paging and e-mail to bring issues to the experts' attention for quick resolution. For more information, see Configuring e-mail notification.
• Ability to deploy configuration settings: BMC PATROL for Microsoft Windows Servers supports the BMC PATROL Configuration Manager, which allows you to configure and deploy KM configuration settings to other servers in your environment. To support the BMC PATROL Configuration Manager, all BMC PATROL for Microsoft Windows Servers configuration settings are stored as agent configuration variables. For a complete list of the agent configuration variables for BMC PATROL for Microsoft Windows Servers, see Managing configuration variables.
• Built-in recovery actions: Recovery actions are corrective actions taken by PATROL when a parameter reaches a set value. You can configure these recovery actions to run automatically or only with operator intervention. BMC PATROL for Microsoft Windows Servers provides the following automated, built-in recovery actions: 
  • Terminating a run-away process
  • Clearing the temp directory
  • Backing-up and clearing event logs
  • Restarting processes
  • Restarting failed services
  • Increasing available DFS connections when utilization is high
  • Increasing share connections when utilization is high
  • Initiating WINS scavenging when replication fails
  • Restarting the Windows Management Instrumentation (WINMGMT.exe ) service to ensure that WMI data is available
  • Restarting a PATROL Agent on a remote server
    For more information about specific recovery actions, see Configuring recovery actions.
• Predefined rulesets for common server types: BMC PATROL for Microsoft Windows Servers provides rulesets that provide appropriate monitoring setups for common server types, such as a file server or an application server. Using the BMC PATROL Configuration Manager, you can automatically configure the server monitoring by applying these provided rulesets to the appropriate server. If necessary, you can then adjust your configuration and save it in the ruleset, which you can then apply to other servers. For more information about the rulesets and using BMC PATROL Configuration Manager to manage your configuration, see Using PATROL Configuration Manager to apply rulesets.
• Virtualization with Hyper-V: Microsoft Windows provides virtualization called Hyper-V. The new hypervisor platform works with Windows Server 2008 to create and manage a virtual infrastructure. Hyper-V consists of a 64-bit hypervisor that can run 32-bit and 64-bit virtual machines concurrently. Hyper-V virtualization works with single and multi-processor virtual machines and includes tools such as snapshots, which capture the state of a running virtual machine. BMC PATROL for Microsoft Windows Servers allows you to monitor the following Hyper-V entities:
  • Hypervisor: The product reports information about the number of monitored notifications registered with a hypervisor, the bootstrap and deposited pages, and the partitions, virtual processors, logical processors, and the running partitions present.
  • Logical processors of the system: The product reports information about the rate of the virtual processor context switches on a logical processor, the rate of hardware and hypervisor interrupts on a processor, and the percentage of time that a processor spends in the guest and hypervisor codes.
  • Partitions of the system: The product reports information about the partitions present in the system, and the summary and state of all the partitions. It reports the number of virtual processors associated with a partition, the total memory allocated to a partition, the qualified domain name, the operating system and its version, the service pack, and so on. It also displays the process ID of the worker process corresponding to the partitions, and the uptime of the partition.

  • Virtual processors of the partition: The product reports information about the virtual processors such as the resources available to a partition and the number of partitions that you can run at a time. It displays the allocation of resources by the hypervisor to a partition when partitions compete for resources. It reports the rate of hypervisor intercept messages. It also reports the percentage of time that a processor spends in the guest and hypervisor codes.

  • Virtual hard disks of a partition: The product reports information about virtual hard disks of a partition such as their type, size on the physical disk, maximum size as viewable by the partition, and the percentage of use of the types of virtual hard disks.

    Note

    To discover Hyper-V partitions and the data for each partition, the BMC PATROL Agent default user must be added to the local administrator group.