Using blackouts

You can use BMC ProactiveNet Performance Management or BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management 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. For more information on sheduling blackout using BMC ProactiveNet Performance Management see Creating a blackout policy page of the BMC ProactiveNet 9.6 documentation

Best practices for creating blackout policies

• Blackout policies apply to PATROL Agents and the related data collection, events, and recovery actions. They do not apply to the behavior of the BMC ProactiveNet Server or Infrastructure Management Server. The following are best practices for blackout policies:
• Establish a standard and provide meaningful names for blackout policies. Include an abbreviation for the managed technology and/or agent domain and/or applications that the blackouts apply to.
• Provide a complete description for each blackout policy and put the information with the maximum impact at the beginning of the description.
• Follow the recommendations for precedence values.
• Do not create time frames as part of the blackout policy creation process. Although this feature is available, time frames must be defined and created before creating blackout policies.
• Avoid creating overlapping blackout policies as much as possible.