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.



Related topics

Viewing-and-managing-time-frames

Managing-policies

Policy-management

Other policy types

Defining-a-staging-policy

Defining-a-monitoring-policy

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

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Agent Selection Criteria

Configure the conditions to select PATROL Agents based on the following properties, and the policy is applied on the selected agents.

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Scope

Option

Description

Apply Blackout To:

Displays the following options:

  • Complete Agents - Indicates that the blackout configuration is applicable to all the monitor instances on the selected PATROL Agents.
  • Monitor Types and Instances - Indicates that the blackout configuration is applicable to the monitor instances of the specific monitor types on the selected PATROL Agents. If you select this option, you must add the monitor types and instances.

For Agent Output 

Displays the following options:

  • Data (TYPE_COLLECTION) - The Infrastructure Management server stops receiving data, which includes events and recovery actions, from PATROL Agents.
  • Events (TYPE_EVENT) - The Infrastructure Management server stops receiving events and recovery actions from the PATROL Agents.  
  • Recovery Actions (TYPE_RECOVERY) - The Infrastructure Management server stops receiving recovery actions from the PATROL Agents.
    Note    : After the Recovery Actions option is selected, you cannot remove the option. The scope of a blackout policy is always applicable for recovery actions.

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

  1. Log on to the TrueSight console.
  2. In the navigation pane, expand Configuration and select Policies.
  3. Click the Blackout tab and then, click Create Policy.
  4. In the Create Blackout Policy page, specify the blackout policy properties:
    1. Specify the basic properties. For more information, see General properties.
    2. Configure the conditions to select the PATROL Agents on which you want to apply the policy. For more information, see Agent Selection Criteria properties.

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To view the list of PATROL Agents that are selected based on the specified criteria, click Preview.

  1. 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).
  2. To specify the scope of blackout:
    1. Click the Scope tab.
    2. Configure the scope of blackout. For more information, see Scope properties.
  3. 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

Monitoring-devices-from-the-TrueSight-console


 

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