Defining a blackout policy
You can define and manage policies to black out a PATROL Agent from performing certain actions such as blacking out data, events, or recovery actions. You can schedule a blackout policy based on a predefined time frame. You can also define a blackout policy that is always 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.
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 | Priority of the policy. Based on the precedence number that you configure, the configuration is applied to the PATROL Agents and the Infrastructure Management servers. The precedence number ranges from 0 to 999. A lower number indicates a higher precedence. The default value is 900. The configuration from a policy with a higher precedence overrides the configuration from a policy with a lower precedence. If two policies have the same precedence number, then the configuration from the latest created policy takes priority. |
| 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. |
Agent Selection Criteria
Configure the conditions to select PATROL Agents based on the following properties, and the policy is applied on the selected agents.
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| 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:
|
| Agent Port | Port number through which the PATROL Agent listens for incoming connections from the PATROL console. You can 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 | Display name of the Integration Service. |
| Infrastructure Management Server | Host name of the Infrastructure Management Server that is registered with the Presentation Server. |
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
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Apply Blackout To: | Displays the following options:
|
| For Agent Output | Displays the following options:
|
| 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
- Log on to the TrueSight console.
- In the navigation pane, expand Configuration and select Policies.
Click the Blackout tab and then, click Create Policy.
In the Create Blackout Policy page, specify the blackout policy properties:
- Specify the basic properties. For more information, see General properties.
Configure the conditions to select the PATROL Agents on which you want to apply the policy. For more information, see Agent Selection Criteria properties.
To view the list of PATROL Agents that are selected based on the specified criteria, click Preview.
- Select a property.
- Select an operator to create the condition. The available operators depend on the property that you select.
- Specify a value for the selected property.
- (Optional) To add more than one condition, click the
button, and perform the earlier steps. - (Optional) To group the conditions, use the following parentheses and Boolean operators from their corresponding lists:
- (
- ((
- (((
- )
- ))
- )))
- AND
- OR
- (Optional) To remove any existing condition, click the
button.
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).
- To specify the scope of blackout:
- Click the Scope tab.
- Configure the scope of blackout. For more information, see Scope properties.
- 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
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