BMC PATROL Agent is a core component of the BMC ProactiveNet architecture that monitors and manages the distributed environment.
A BMC PATROL Agent performs the following tasks:
For information about BMC PATROL Agent, see BMC PATROL Agent 9.0.
BMC PATROL Agent is configured for BMC ProactiveNet using BMC ProactiveNet Central Monitoring Administration.
BMC ProactiveNet Central Monitoring Administration is a web-based administration interface used to perform the following tasks:
BMC PATROL Agent installation packages are silent installation files that contain your installation preferences for monitoring solutions and components. Central Monitoring Administration uses policies to configure monitoring solutions and thresholds and to copy baselines.
With Central Monitoring Administration, administrators select monitor installation components, such as the BMC PATROL Agent and monitoring solutions, from the BMC ProactiveNet Central Monitoring Repository to create an installation package. The components can then be installed together using the installation package. You can reuse the installation packages, or deploy the packages to multiple computers.
Through Central Monitoring Administration, administrators define and manage policies. A policy is a set of actions to perform, such as configuring monitoring solutions on BMC PATROL Agents, creating thresholds on BMC ProactiveNet Child Servers, and copying baselines between similar instances of child servers. Policies can also be used to assign devices and monitor instances to User Groups which can be used for access control.
A policy is applied to the BMC PATROL Agents based on the conditions such as agent name, agent port, agent version, agent tag, and so on. If an agent matches the conditions defined in multiple policies, then Central Monitoring Administration combines the configuration across the policies and applies it to the agent.
For information about BMC ProactiveNet Central Monitoring Administration, see BMC ProactiveNet Central Monitoring Administration architecture.
The BMC PATROL Agent reads the tag information from the following pconfig variable:
/AgentSetup/Identification/Tags/Tag/tagName, where tagName is the name of the tag
The BMC PATROL Agent sends the information to the Integration Service, which passes the information to Central Monitoring Administration. Central Monitoring Administration evaluates policies that match the tags or the agent properties, determines the final configuration to be applied, and sends the configuration information back to the agent. Monitoring is based on the configuration information received by the agent, under /AgentSetup/preloadedKMs pconfig variable. It contains the list of .kml files that must be loaded for the corresponding configuration.
The BMC PATROL Agent initiates a configuration request after certain events, such as agent installation, agent restart, agent auto-connection with Integration Service, or changing a tag on the agent. If no policy matches the agent conditions, the agent does not receive configuration information. The agent does not receive the configuration until a matching policy is created.
If a policy is created or updated, changes are pushed from Central Monitoring Administration, via the Integration Service, to BMC PATROL Agents, and the /AgentSetup/preloadedKMs pconfig variable is received as a part of configuration.
The monitoring solutions configuration is stored under /ConfigData pconfig branch. The pconfig variables received by BMC PATROL Agent from Central Monitoring Administration are with REPLACE request. For the configuration under /ConfigData, only the difference between the configuration received and the configuration that the agent contains is applied. If some configuration is not received, it is considered to be deleted and is deleted from /ConfigData. For the configuration under /AgentSetup, it is applied directly.
For /AgentSetup configurations, the variables under the /ConfigData pconfig branch take precedence.
Warning
You should not manually update any variables and values under /ConfigData. The variables and values are only for internal use.
For information about BMC PATROL Agent, see the BMC PATROL Agent 9.0.
BMC ProactiveNet Central Monitoring Administration architecture