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
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.
Property | Description |
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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 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 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. |
Configure the conditions to select PATROL Agents based on the following properties, and the policy is applied on the selected agents.
Property | Description |
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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:
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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 Version | Version of the PATROL Agent. |
Agent Operating System | Operating system of the computer on which the PATROL Agent is installed. |
Agent IP Address | IP 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 Tag | Tag applied on the PATROL Agent. |
Integration Service | PATROL Agents connected to the selected Integration Service. |
Infrastructure Management Server | PATROL Agents connected to the selected Infrastructure Management Server. |
Monitoring Solution Name1 | PATROL Agents on which the selected monitoring solution is installed. |
Monitoring Solution Version1 | PATROL Agents on which monitoring solutions of the specified version are installed. |
Tenant Name | Name 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.
Option | Description |
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Apply Blackout To: | Displays the following options:
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For Agent Output | Displays the following options:
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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. |
The following video (5:36) explains how to create and implement a blackout policy.
Click the Blackout tab and then, click Create Policy.
In the Create Blackout Policy page, specify the blackout policy properties:
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 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).
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.
2 Comments
Franz Finke
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.