Defining monitor policies
Monitor policies are a set of rules that enable administrators to deploy configurations to PATROL Agents using monitoring solutions. Monitor policies provide instructions and information about what information to monitor. For example, you want to configure all information about CPU and memory utilization of your Windows environment.
A monitor policy is applied to the PATROL Agents based on conditions such as Agent name, Agent port, Agent version, Agent tag, and so on. PATROL Agents collect performance data and generate events for availability metrics.
When PATROL Agents are deployed and monitor policies are configured, the Agents receive the appropriate configuration and begin monitoring. When an existing policy is modified, the changes are automatically applied to the Agents.
On the Configuration > Monitor Policies page, the following monitor policies are available out-of-the-box:
- Predefined policy for Linux
- Predefined policy for Windows
To create a monitor policy
On the Configuration > Monitor Policies page, click Create, and follow these steps:
On the Create Monitoring Policy page, add a unique name and description for the monitoring policy.
BMC recommends that you organize policies according to the precedence numbers when creating and editing policies. You can also include policy-specific information in the policy names. For more information, see Policy precedence.Add the associated user group for the policy.
An associated user group is the user group that the logged-on user belongs to. If the user belongs to multiple user groups, select the appropriate user group for the policy.If you want to share the policy with the user group that you selected, select the Share with User Group checkbox.
Add a unique precedence number to the policy.
You can add a custom value in this field, or use the arrows to increase or decrease the value.If you want to enable the policy immediately, select Enable Policy. You can enable it later from the Monitor Policies page.
Create the PATROL Agent selection criteria based on which the policy must be applied to the Agents.
- Add other configurations in any or all of the following tabs by clicking them:
Monitoring
Deactivate Collection
Polling Intervals
Configuration Variables
- Save the monitoring policy.
To view monitoring policies
View all monitor policies on the Configuration > Monitor Policies page.
If a PATROL Agent (responsible to monitor) is added to the authorization profile that you are a part of, you can view the policies created for the monitoring solution. You cannot view the policies if the PATROL Agent is removed from the authorization profile.
Click a policy name to see the View Monitoring Policy page. This page displays the general properties of the policy and the agent selection criteria that you used while creating the policy. It also shows other configurations that you made while creating the policy. If you have not configured a criterion, you can see the following message in the criterion area:
No data to display.
To edit a policy
- On the Configuration > Monitor Policies page, click the action menu of the policy that you want to modify and select Edit.
- Edit the policy and save the changes.
To copy a policy
Before copying the policy, ensure the following:
- The user that you plan to use in the new policy belongs to the associated user group in the original policy.
- The associated user group in the new policy can access the monitoring solutions and configurations of the original policy. Without this, the monitoring solutions and configurations will not be available in the new policy.
On the Configuration > Monitor Policies page, click the action menu of the policy that you want to copy and select Copy. The Create Policy page is displayed with the configurations of the copied policy. You can modify the configurations according to your requirements. If you have configured credentials in the policy, ensure that you update the credentials to access the host. If you have configured credentials in the policy, ensure that you update the credentials to access the host.
To filter polices and viewing applicable Agent details
Go to Configuration > Monitor Policies to view all monitor polices. You can filter the policies on this page to view applicable Agent details.
To filter policies, use any or all of the following check boxes:
- Enabled
- Disabled
- Shared
- Not Shared
To view applicable Agent details:
- Click a policy action menu.
- Click View Applicable Agents to view the information on the Selected Agents page.
Use the Search Agent Name field to search for specific agents.
To enable or disable a policy
To enable a policy, on the Configuration > Monitor Policies page, click the action menu of a disabled policy and click Enable.
To disable a policy, on the Configuration > Monitor Policies page, click the action menu of an enabled policy and click Disable.
After enabling or disabling a policy, ensure that you wait for a few minutes before changing the status again.
To delete a policy
On the Configuration > Monitor Policies page follow these steps:
- If the policy that you want to delete is enabled, disable it.
- Click the action menu for the policy, and click Delete and then click Yes on the confirmation message window.
Policy precedence
Policy precedence is the priority of a policy and ranges from 0 to 999. A lower number indicates a higher priority. Policy precedence controls the configuration applied to the PATROL Agents and BMC Helix Operations Management servers when there are conflicting or overlapping configurations defined between two or more monitor policies.
If two policies attempt to manage the same variable, such as /AgentSetup/historyRetentionPeriod, the PATROL Agent resolves the conflict by evaluating the precedence of the involved policies. Consider the following examples:
Example: with conflict | Example: without conflict | |
---|---|---|
Scenario details | Policy A: Precedence number - 099 Includes configuration for the amount of history the Agent should retain. /AgentSetup/historyRetentionPeriod - 7 (retention in days) | Monitor policy A: Precedence number - 699 Includes configuration for monitoring the following Microsoft Windows services:
|
Policy B: Precedence number - 070 Includes configuration for the amount of history the Agent should retain. /AgentSetup/historyRetentionPeriod - 1 (retention in days) | Monitor policy B: Precedence number - 499 Includes configuration for monitoring the following Microsoft Windows services:
| |
When monitor policies A and B are applied to a PATROL Agent | The Agent resolves the conflict that is related to the /AgentSetup/historyRetentionPeriod variable by evaluating the precedence values of the policies. Because the precedence value of Policy B (070) is lower than that of Policy A (099), Policy B is applied to the Agent. Therefore, the retention period is set to 1 day. Remember the rule: Lower the number, higher the precedence. | The Agent is configured according to the union of policy A and policy B because there are no conflicts. All the Windows services configured in policy A and policy B are monitored. |
Important: Do not use the same precedence value
BMC recommends that you do not use the same precedence values for different policies. In such a scenario, the policies behave in the following way:
- If polices with the same precedence value have the same KM parameters with different threshold settings, and they apply to different platforms, the policy with the latest time stamp is applied.
- If policies with the same precedence value have different KM parameters, and they apply to the same host, both policies are applied.
See the following table for some suggestions:
Precedence range | Applicable for | Additional information |
---|---|---|
001 – 049 | Temporary policy overrides | Use for a short term for specific monitor policies until a complete policy is developed. |
050 – 099 | Monitor policies for low-level behavior management in Agents | Use for monitor policies that you always want to enforce. For example, Agent tuning, event propagation. |
100 – 299 | Monitor policies that are specific to a logical group of servers | Use for monitor policies such as vCenter monitoring, Exchange Servers, Oracle Servers, Location Related Servers or Services, Agent tuning overrides, and so on. |
300 – 499 | Specific platform variance monitor policies | Use for monitor policies such as Remote OS monitoring, Windows 2008 monitoring, Linux 6.7 monitoring, Specific Windows services, Specific UNIX processes, and so on. |
500 – 699 | Standard platform monitor policies | Apply as a standard to large groups of Agents. For example, All Windows, all Linux, and so on. |
700 – 899 | Other platform monitor policies | Use for examples such as Storage, Network, SNMP, PING, AWS, Azure, and so on. |
950 – 999 | Prepackaged monitor policies | Reserved for the BMC prepackaged monitor policies. You get these policies when you import the PATROL repository. |
Tip: Assigning precedence numbers
Assign precedence numbers starting with the highest number in the range and then continue in the descending order. By doing so, you can leave the lower numbers in the range for specific use cases.
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