Creating a new standard blackout policy

A blackout policy specifies a period of time during which notifications about incoming events that match the event specification criteria are ignored. The blackout events, however, are logged. You can view the blackout events when you open the collector that is specific to the events.

Typically you define a blackout policy for a specific time frame or time frames, indicating when the policy is active, inactive, or both.

Although the events originating from the device are blacked out, you can still collect data from the device.

When to use a blackout policy

You would schedule a blackout policy for events for several reasons. Some of them include:

• Upgrading the Infrastructure Management device 
• Changing your network environment 
• Reducing the volume of event messages displayed in the consoles 
• Eliminate misleading events and notifications 
• During a maintenance window

To create new a standard blackout policy

1. From the Event Management Policies tab of the Administration View, expand the By Policy Type folder.
2. Under the By Policy Type folder, select Blackout Policy.
3. Click Add Policy .
   
   A Selector Chooser dialog box is displayed. 
   
   
4. From the Selector Chooser dialog box, select the event selector that you want to use for this policy and click OK. 
   
   The Blackout Policy Details tab is displayed in the details pane of the Administration View as shown in the following figure. 
   
   Blackout Policy Details tab
   
5. In the Policy Name field, type a unique alphanumeric name for the event management policy. The name must contain no spaces.
6. In the Description field, type a description of the event management policy.
7. To enable the event management policy, select the Enabled check box. If you do not want to enable the policy at this time, you can return to this dialog box and enable the policy later.

8. In the Policy Activation Timeframes section, define the periods of time the event management policy should be active (when enabled) by performing the following actions:

   1. Select one of the following choices: 
      • To make the event management policy active continuously, select Always Active. You only would select this option under special circumstances. 
      • To specify when the policy is active or inactive, select Define Activation Timeframes. This is the typical option for scheduling blackout events.
        
        The Active Timeframes and Not Active Timeframes selections are shown, as shown in the following figure. 
        
   2. If you selected Define Activation Timeframes, depending on how you want to define the timeframe for your policy do one or both of the following:

   • 
     
     •  To specify the periods of time when the policy should be active, select the Active Timeframes check box and one or more timeframes from its scrollable list.

     • To specify the periods of time when the policy should be inactive, select the Not Active Timeframescheck box and one or more timeframes from its scrollable list.

       Note

       You can select both check boxes to create active and inactive time periods. However, the inactive time period takes precedence over the active time period.

9. When specifying the time frames, you can indicate how you want to handle blackout events at the start, during, and at the end of the timeframe schedule. The actions under each timeframe period are mutually exclusive and are described in the following table. 
   
   During the processing phase, the blackout event policy evaluates each event for a match based on its selector only once, when it arrives at the cell. To maintain adequate system performance, the blackout policy does not evaluate events at the start and the end of every active time frame. 
   
   Actions for blackout events

   Timeframe period	Action
   At start of Blackout Window	Do not change status of existing events  This default option leaves all existing events in their current status. Change status of existing open events to blackout  Reclassifies open events, effectively removing unneeded statuses. that would no longer make sense during the blackout time frame.
   During Blackout Window	Keep incoming events and set their status to blackout  This default option converts all incoming matching events to blackout status. Discard incoming events  This option filters out all incoming blacked-out events so that you do not have to see them.
   At End of Blackout Window	Leave blacked-out events in blackout status  This default option maintains the blackout status of the events received during the blackout window; and those events whose status was changed to blackout at the start of the blackout window. Change existing blacked-out events to open status  This option changes all events in blackout status to open status. It does not impact events in closed status. Choosing this option lets you see events which arrived during the blackout time frame that are still valid.

    

   Note

   Blackout event actions are applied to events based on their policy selectors when the events first arrive at the cell. If you modify an event after it has been processed by the cell so that it no longer matches its policy selector, the blackout event action is still applied to the event based on the initial evaluation.

10. Click OK. 
    
    administration console saves the defined event management policy, and it is displayed in the list of event policies for the selected event selector. Creating new standard event management policies