How can I build a schedule to prevent rules from triggering during my maintenance windows?

To prevent rules from triggering during your maintenance window, you must create a server down rule with no associated schedule.

About this task

Next, create a rule schedule for the maintenance window. Duplicate the server down rule, specify the schedule created for the maintenance window, and change the action to No Operation. Then, give the second server down rule a higher priority than the first server down rule.

You can set up a schedule to deal with a problem common to all rules: triggering during maintenance periods when servers are expected to be down. For example, if you have weekly maintenance windows on Sundays from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., you may want to know when servers go down, except during these maintenance windows.

Procedure

  1. Create a Server Down rule, as described in How can I know when a monitored server goes down?, with no associated schedule.
  2. Create a rule schedule that specifies all Sundays from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. This task is easy to do, because a calendar named Sunday ships with IBM® Sterling Control Center Monitor which specifies all Sundays in a year. The following table illustrates sample criterion of a rule schedule. Be sure to enable Check Schedule against when event occurred
    Calendar Name Time Zone Start time End Day End Time
    Sunday (UTC-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada) 13:00 Calendar Start Day 16:00
  3. Duplicate the server down rule you created before and name it Server Down 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
  4. When prompted for a schedule for this new rule, specify the “Sundays 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.” rule schedule you previously created.
  5. Change the action to No Operation.
  6. Make this second server down rule a higher priority rule than the first server down rule that has no calendar associated with it.

Results

Now, when a server goes down, the IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor engine first sees your new server down rule. If it happens to be Sunday between 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., this rule is triggered and performs no operation. If it is not Sunday between 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., this rule is not triggered. Instead, the old server down rule, the one with no associated schedule, is triggered. Whatever action you specified for this second server down rule is performed.

By taking advantage of the fact that only one IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor rule is triggered per event, and by putting first the server down rule that takes no action, you accomplish your goal of knowing when a server down event occurs outside of the maintenance window.