PATROL Agent configuration and assignment to an Integration Service

Configuration of the performance and event data that is sent from the PATROL Agents to the BMC TrueSight Infrastructure Management Server is defined in policies, which are automatically applied to the required PATROL Agents. The PATROL Agent assignment is defined in each policy based on selection criteria. The details of agent selection criteria per policy are discussed at Staging Integration Service host deployment and policy management for development, test, and production best practices. BMC PATROL events and performance data are completely controlled at the PATROL Agent based on these policies. This means data, events, data and events, or no data and no events are controlled as per the parameter. You can edit or change these configuration settings when you want without having to rebuild any configurations or restart any processes.

How configuration is applied to a PATROL Agent

First, a PATROL Agent reads the tag information from the pconfig variable, /AgentSetup/Identification/Tags/Tag/tagName, where tagName is the name of the tag. The PATROL Agent then sends the information to the Integration Service, which passes the information to Central Monitoring Administration. Central Monitoring Administration evaluates which policies match the tags or the agent properties, determines the final configuration to be applied, and sends the configuration information to the agent.

When configuration is applied to a PATROL Agent

A 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 PATROL Agents.

Where PATROL Agent configuration is stored

The monitoring solutions configuration is stored under the /ConfigData pconfig branch. The pconfig variables received by PATROL Agent from Central Monitoring Administration are applied with the 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 for a particular class, it is considered to be deleted and is deleted from /ConfigData. For the configuration under /AgentSetup, it is applied directly.

Related topics

Creating and editing component installation packages

Integration Service host deployment and best practices for event processing and propagation

Setting up agents and policies for infrastructure monitoring