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    BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management 10.7

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    You can define a blackout policy to restrict the PATROL Agent so that it does not send data, events, or recovery actions to TrueSight Operations Management for the predefined time frame. You can also define a blackout policy that is permanently active for specific PATROL Agents.


    Ensure that you have the required permissions to define and manage blackout policies. For details, see Configuring Infrastructure Management to monitor and manage your infrastructure systems.



    Related topics

    Viewing and managing time frames

    Managing policies

    Policy management

    Other policy types

    Defining a staging policy

    Defining a monitoring policy

    Blackout policies apply to PATROL Agents and the related data collection, events, and recovery actions. They do not apply to the behavior of the Infrastructure Management server.

    Best Practice

    • Establish a standard and provide meaningful names for blackout policies. Include an abbreviation for the managed technology, agent domain, and 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 overlapping blackout policies to avoid confusion.

    Note

    Blackout policies do not work with the remote monitoring OS Knowledge Modules and Knowledge Modules that are not Infrastructure Management 9.6 compliant. For such Knowledge Modules, use event management blackout configuration. Also, you can use event management blackout capability for all blackouts as your standard blackout methodology.

    Blackout policy properties 

    General


    Property

    		Description
    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. 

    For more information, see Policy naming guidelines.

    Description(Optional) A brief description about the policy
    Associated User Group

    Name of the user group that is associated with the PATROL Agents as defined in the Authorization Profile or in the PATROL Agent ACLs. The policy is applicable to these PATROL Agents.

    Note: The list of user groups that is displayed includes the user groups that the logged on user belongs to. For monitoring and blackout policies, this property determines the monitoring solutions and configuration options that you have. For more information about granting or restricting access, see Specifying objects in an authorization profile .

    This property can be viewed in READ-ONLY mode by other users of the user group. Only the owner of the policy can modify this property.

    Share with User Group

    Specify whether this policy is to be shared with the users across the associated user group or not. This property can be viewed in READ-ONLY mode by other users of the associated user group. Only the owner of the policy can modify this property.

    Precedence

    This setting is not applicable for blackout policies.

    Enable PolicyIndicates 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 PATROL Agents and the Infrastructure Management Servers. If you disable any existing policy, the policy configurations are removed from the PATROL Agents and the Infrastructure Management servers, where the policy was applied.

    Agent Selection Criteria

    Configure the conditions to select PATROL Agents based on the following properties, and the policy is applied on the selected agents.

    PropertyDescription
    Agent Host Name

    Host name of the computer on which the PATROL Agent is installed.

    Note: The value for the matches property must be a strict regular expression. Some examples of regular expressions that can be used:

    • virtual_machine -- To select Agents that match the exact string "virtual_machine" 
    • .*?virtual_machine.* -- To select Agents that match the sub-string "virtual_machine"
    • ^((?!clm-pun).)*$  -- To select Agents that do not match the sub-string  "clm-pun"
    Agent Port

    Port number through which the PATROL Agent listens for incoming connections from the PATROL console.

    Use port numbers from 1025 to 65535.

    Agent VersionVersion of the PATROL Agent.
    Agent Operating SystemOperating system of the computer on which the PATROL Agent is installed.
    Agent IP AddressIP address of the computer on which the PATROL Agent is installed. If you select the Agent IP Address in the range condition, only IPv4 range is supported.
    Agent TagTag applied on the PATROL Agent.
    Integration ServicePATROL Agents connected to the selected Integration Service.
    Infrastructure Management ServerPATROL Agents connected to the selected Infrastructure Management Server.
    Monitoring Solution Name1PATROL Agents on which the selected monitoring solution is installed.
    Monitoring Solution Version1PATROL Agents on which monitoring solutions of the specified version are installed.
    Tenant NameName of the tenant to which the PATROL Agent are associated via the Integration Service.

    1 - The Monitoring Solution Name property is only applicable to PATROL Agent version 10.0 and later.


    You can set multiple conditions and also group the conditions to identify the agents.

    Note: The values that you enter for the properties are not case-sensitive.

    Scope

    OptionDescription
    Apply Blackout To:

    Displays the following options:

    • Complete Agents - Indicates that the blackout configuration is applicable to all the monitor instances on the selected PATROL Agents.
    • Monitor Types and Instances - Indicates that the blackout configuration is applicable to the monitor instances of the specific monitor types on the selected PATROL Agents. If you select this option, you must add the monitor types and instances.
    For Agent Output 

    Displays the following options:

    • Data (TYPE_COLLECTION) - The Infrastructure Management server stops receiving data, which includes events and recovery actions, from PATROL Agents.
    • Events (TYPE_EVENT) - The Infrastructure Management server stops receiving events and recovery actions from the PATROL Agents.  
    • Recovery Actions (TYPE_RECOVERY) - The Infrastructure Management server stops receiving recovery actions from the PATROL Agents.
      Note      : After the Recovery Actions       option is selected, you cannot remove the option. The scope of a blackout policy is always applicable for recovery actions.
    Do Not Send Blackout Start/Stop Events (TYPE_APPLICATION_BO_EVENT)

    If you select this option, PATROL Agents do not send 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 enables you to stop the Agent from sending start and stop events for each monitor instance.

    To create a blackout policy

    The following video (5:36) explains how to create and implement a blackout policy.

    1. Log on to the TrueSight console.
    2. In the navigation pane, expand Configuration and select Policies.

    3. Click the Blackout tab and then, click Create Policy.

    4. In the Create Blackout Policy page, specify the blackout policy properties:

      1. Specify the basic properties. For more information, see 759662997.

      2. Configure the conditions to select the PATROL Agents on which you want to apply the policy. For more information, see 759662997.

         Steps to select Agents


        1. Select a property.
        2. Select an operator to create the condition. The available operators depend on the property that you select.
        3. Specify a value for the selected property.
        4. (Optional) To add more than one condition, click the button, and perform the earlier steps.
        5. (Optional) To group the conditions, use the following parentheses and Boolean operators from their corresponding lists:
          • (
          • ((
          • (((
          • )
          • ))
          • )))
          • AND
          • OR
        6. (Optional) To remove any existing condition, click the  button.

        To view the list of PATROL Agents that are selected based on the specified criteria, click Preview.


    5. To associate time frames with the policy: In the Time Frames tab, select the time frames from the Available list and move them to the Selected list.

      Notes

      • The Available list includes all the time frames that you have created. For more information about creating time frames, see Defining a time frame for blackout policies

      • The time specified in the time frame is applied according to the PATROL Agent local time. For example, a blackout policy that is set for 3 A.M.– 6 A.M. and applied to four Agents (2 PDT, 2 EDT) makes the PATROL Agents in US Eastern Daylight Savings Time (EDT) go into blackout 3 hours before the two PATROL Agents in the US Pacific Daylight Saving Time (PDT).

    6. To specify the scope of blackout:
      1. Click the Scope tab.
      2. Configure the scope of blackout. For more information, see 759662997.
    7. Click Save.

    After you save the blackout policy, the configuration is pushed to the selected PATROL Agents.

    Notes

    If you remove a monitoring policy that has Agent threshold configured during a blackout period, events generated by the PATROL Agent do not get closed and continue to be displayed in the TrueSight console.

    Where to go from here

    Monitoring devices from the TrueSight console




    2 Comments

    1. Franz Finke

       

      1. Harihara Subramanian

        Hello Franz Finke,

        The policy type itself is blackout policy. Therefore, the definition seems to be correct IMO. 

        Your suggestion would go well if it is a generic policy and we are using it to black out data, events, and so on.

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