Precedence best practices
Policy precedence controls the configuration applied to the PATROL Agents and BMC ProactiveNet Child Servers when there are conflicting or overlapping configurations defined between two or more policies. This section covers how precedence is applied and best practices regarding usage of precedence values.
Precedence behavior
Precedence is the priority of a policy and ranges from 0 to 999. A lower number indicates a higher priority.
All policy configuration that is sent to a particular BMC PATROL Agent is combined and the result is then sent to the BMC PATROL Agent.
The following table describes the precedence behavior in BMC ProactiveNet 9.5 and later versions:
Behavior | BMC ProactiveNet 9.5 | BMC ProactiveNet 9.5 Service Pack 1/BMC ProactiveNet 9.6 |
|---|---|---|
Precedence evaluation and conflict resolution | Applied at the application class and monitor type level. | Applied at the monitored instance level. |
Same precedence number between two policies | Any conflicting configuration from the most recently created policy overrides conflicting configuration from the policies created earlier. | Same behavior |
Example: Policy A with precedence number 115 includes configuration for monitoring the following Microsoft Windows services:
Policy B with precedence number 105 includes configuration for monitoring the following Windows services:
| After the two policies are applied to an Agent, the Agent is configured according to policy B. The Windows services configured in policy A are not monitored. | After the two policies are applied to an Agent, the Agent is configured according to the union of policy A and policy B. All the Windows services configured in policy A and policy B are monitored. |
Precedence values
It is very important to keep policies organized, otherwise it can be difficult to know the settings that are applied to agents and the order in which the precedence is applied. Therefore, BMC recommends that you keep policies organized according to the precedence number. You must define a precedence numbering system so that policies are grouped according to numeric ranges by the precedence number based on the monitored technology that the policies are related to. The following chart is an example.
Precedence range | Monitored technology | Additional details |
|---|---|---|
1 - 10 | Staging policies | Contains settings for data collection Integration Service nodes |
11 - 99 | Blackout policies | Contains settings for agent blackout periods based on specific time frames |
100 - 199 | Agent configuration | Contains settings such as agent user ID/password, agent tag, history retention, and so on |
200 – 210 | Windows Operating System Basic | Configuration for Microsoft Windows operating system monitoring that covers basic settings and applies as a standard to most or all Windows servers |
211 – 219 | Windows clusters | Configuration for Microsoft Windows Cluster monitoring |
220 – 229 | Active Directory | Configuration for monitoring Microsoft Active Directory |
230 – 239 | MS SQL Server | Configuration for monitoring Microsoft SQL Server |
240 – 249 | SharePoint | Configuration for monitoring Microsoft SharePoint |
250 –259 | Exchange | Configuration for monitoring Microsoft Exchange |
260 – 269 | Microsoft DNS | Configuration for monitoring Microsoft DNS servers |
270 – 279 | Microsoft DHCP | Configuration for monitoring Microsoft DHCP servers |
280 – 289 | IIS | Configuration for monitoring Microsoft IIS servers |
290 – 299 | Windows Operating System Nonstandard | Configuration for Microsoft Windows operating system monitoring that covers nonstandard configurations |
300 – 329 | Linux Operating System Basic | Configuration for Linux operating system monitoring that covers basic settings and applies as a standard to most or all Linux servers |
330 – 349 | Linux Operating System Nonstandard | Configuration for Linux operating system monitoring that covers nonstandard configurations |
350 – 369 | UNIX Operating System Basic | Configuration for Linux operating system monitoring that covers basic settings and applies as a standard to most or all Linux servers |
370 – 389 | UNIX Operating System Nonstandard | Configuration for Linux operating system monitoring that covers nonstandard configurations |
390 – 399 | Currently Not Used |
|
400 – 449 | Oracle databases | Configuration for monitoring the Oracle Databases |
450 – 499 | Oracle applications | Configuration for monitoring Oracle applications |
500 – 549 | Apache | Configuration for monitoring Apache web servers |
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