Setting blackout periods

BMC PATROL for Oracle e-Business Suite allows you to schedule suspended states for applications and parameters. This suspended state, or blackout period, stops parameter collection and alarms for the specified amount of time. You can use this feature to ensure that maintenance or backups to the instance do not trigger erroneous alarms or reports.

This topic contains the following information:

Blackout examples

Blackout periods are scheduled by the day of the week, not by date. You can choose between a one-time blackout on a specified day and a recurring blackout on the same day every week. The following information provides some examples:

Example 1

You routinely perform maintenance on an instance every Sunday at 3:00 AM. You do not want PATROL to alarm that this instance is down, run any reports, or perform any data collection. You can set a blackout for every Sunday at 3:00 AM and set the duration for 2 hours to allow for the maintenance work. PATROL will not alarm during this time period.

Example 2

You have a scheduled maintenance blackout set for every Sunday at 3:00 AM, and it lasts for 2 hours. One Sunday you need to perform emergency maintenance at 2:30 AM. You can set a one-time blackout for Sunday at 2:30 AM and make it last for 3 hours. After you set the emergency blackout period, it will envelop the maintenance blackout.

Blackout periods are detected by PATROL during the discovery cycle. As a result, if a blackout is set to 3:00 AM, and the server is brought down at 3:00 AM, PATROL will alarm, because the blackout has not been activated in time. You must have a discovery cycle between the time the blackout starts and the time the maintenance task actually starts. Thus, if you have a 15 minute discovery cycle, and you want maintenance to start at 3:00 AM, the blackout must start at 2:45 AM. Similarly, the end of a blackout period should be set for one discovery cycle after the maintenance period ends.Thus, if maintenance takes until 5:00 AM, set the blackout to end at 5:15 AM.

To set blackout periods for any instance

Select Blackout Instance(s) from the Oracle_Apps hostName application menu.
The Blackout-Schedule-dialog-box appears.
If you have more than one instance configured for monitoring, select the instances for which you want to set this blackout period. If you select more than one instance, all instances will have the same blackout period. If you want different blackout periods for multiple instances, you must set each instance separately.
If you have only one instance configured, it will be selected by default, and you can proceed with the next step.
Select Add Blackout Period.
Select the check box for the day of the week when the blackout period should start. If you want to define multiple blackout periods with identical properties on different days, select more than one day.
Use the Blackout Start Time sliding tabs to define the start time of the blackout period. For example, to start a blackout at 3:00 AM, slide the Hours tab to three, and leave the Minutes and Seconds tabs at zero. To start at 3:00 PM, slide the Hours tab to fifteen.
Blackout periods are scheduled according to the operating system time at the computer where the BMC PATROL Agent is running. This time can differ from the local PATROL Console time.
In the Blackout Duration field, type the duration of the blackout, and select the time unit from the pull-down menu (minutes, hours, or days).
For a recurring blackout on the same day every week, select the Occurs Weekly check box. For a one-time blackout, clear the Occurs Weekly check box.
Click Accept. You can now set a blackout for another instance. All defined blackout periods are listed within the Blackout Schedule dialog box. Each defined blackout period displays the following details:
- day of the week
- start time
- duration in minutes
- recurrence code (0 for one-time or 1 for recurring weekly)
When you are finished, click Exit.

To delete a blackout period

Select Blackout Instance from the Oracle_Apps hostName application menu.
The Blackout Schedule dialog box appears.
If you have more than one instance configured for monitoring, select the instances for which you want to delete this blackout period.If you have only one instance configured, it will be selected by default, and you can proceed with the next step.
Select Delete Blackout Period(s).
From the Blackout period(s) to delete list, select one or more blackouts that you want to delete.
Click Accept.
The blackout period is deleted.
You can now set another blackout for the instance. When you are finished, click Exit.