Managing policies
A policy is a set of conditions that, when met, causes the BMC Network Automation system to perform a set of actions. When a policy executes, BMC Network Automation creates a job containing the policy actions.
The following table contains tasks and information for managing policies by using BMC Network Automation, and provides links to the applicable topics:
Using task | For more information | Benefit |
|---|---|---|
Add a new policy | Add a policy to enable BMC Network Automation to create a job with the specified policy actions. | |
Add a new condition or edit an existing one | Add a condition in a policy to enable BMC Network Automation to take specific actions. | |
Add, edit, or copy keywords for policy conditions | Add, edit, or copy keywords to policy conditions to detect receipt of specific events, configuration discrepancies or configuration changes. | |
Access and view the list of policies | View and then customize policies to support your network environment and IT practices. | |
View the list of policy conditions | View and then customize conditions that are used in policies. | |
View the list of policy condition keywords | View and then customize keywords that are used by policy conditions. | |
Suppress multiple notifications (or auto-remediations) | Define a policy that executes its actions when no prior compliance violations have been logged in the past minute. |
Policies automate network change and configuration tasks such as:
- Detecting and archiving configuration changes made by external users (that is, Auto Archive).
- Scheduling a weekly snapshot.
- Scheduling delivery of reports (for example, Change Summary, Compliance Summary).
- Notifying users or systems when a configuration change or a compliance violation event is detected.
For example, when a a compliance violation event is logged, the Send Compliance Violation Notification policy can be configured to send a notification (for example, SNMP, email, Remedy ticket). Use the following methods to limit when compliance violation notifications are sent:- On the Policy Details tab, you can limit when notifications should be sent if a violation is detected.
- On the Policy Condition page, you can limit the notifications to a filtered set of devices.
- On the Policy Keyword page, you can limit the notifications by severity (for example, Critical and Major only), event type, and search string value.
- Auto-remediate critical compliance violations.