How to manage and implement basic automation with Rules

There are two phases to creating automation with Rules.

The more basic method is to use the panels to create Rules to attain automation based on certain system events. However, you also need to think about your automation from a wider point of view. Do you want automation to suppress a large number of messages? Do you want to reroute messages? Create ALERTs based on system events which might require operator intervention?

Related topic

Automating-with-classic-Rules

Grouping Rules into Rule Sets

The Rule Processor keeps groups of Rules in Rule Sets.

A Rule Set is simply a way to organize and categorize groups of Rules. The Rule Processor supports multiple Rule Sets. Each Rule Set has its own name and is a member of a partitioned data set (PDS) that resides in storage and is loaded every time the BBI-SS PAS is cold-started (or when the .SET RULESET or .RESET RULES command is issued).

An entire Rule Set can be enabled (active) or disabled (inactive). When a Rule Set is disabled, none of the individual Rules within the Rule Set can perform any automation tasks.

Individual Rules also can be enabled or disabled, so, even when a Rule Set is enabled, a Rule within the Rule Set might be disabled and thus not performing any automation tasks.

When you plan which events you want to automate, you might want to consider grouping Rules that perform similar functions together in the same Rule Set. For example, BMC distributes a sample Rule Set that contains Rules whose primary automation action is to suppress messages.

Or you may decide to group Rules that react to the same event type in their own Rule Set. You also need to define a unique name for each Rule Set.

Therefore, you should first consider what categories your Rules might fall under and how you will name the Rule Sets. Then, your site should determine a standard for creating and using Rule Sets.

Once you have developed your Rules and Rule Sets, you can start thinking about automation strategy.

What Automation Strategy is

You could have a situation where an event matches the selection criteria for more than one Rule and you might not want all those Rules to fire in response to a single event.

Your Automation Strategy determines whether all the Rules in all the Rule Sets that match the event are fired to handle that event. The Automation Strategy can also be set so that not all the Rules fire.

See Choosing an automation strategy—ALL, FIRST, or INDIVIDUAL for a complete discussion about how to set Automation Strategy.

Why Automation Strategy is important

Automation Strategy is important because regardless of how many Rules or how few Rules you create for automation, the strategy you set will determine how effective the Rules are.

Using the Automation Control panel

The Automation Control application displays a list of the Rule Sets you have created and displays an overview of how your automation is set up.

This application shows

  • Whether automation is active (you can activate/deactivate automation from this panel)
  • What automation strategy is set
  • Statistics regarding how many events are eligible for automation, how many were already handled by Rules, what the arrival rate of events is, and so on
  • A list of all the Rule Sets and their status

Use this application to manage the Rule Sets and basic automation using Rules.

Using the Rule Set Overview application

Use the Rule Set Overview application to

  • See all of the Rules within a specific Rule Set and their status
  • Set the INDIVIDUAL Automation Strategy for a Rule Set

Once Rules and Rule Sets are created, they are kept in extended common storage. You can save Rules to disk so that they can be recalled after subsystem cold starts.

 

Tip: For faster searching, add an asterisk to the end of your partial query. Example: cert*