Automation policies

Default automation policies

Turbonomic ships with default automation policies built on best practices. You can modify these policies to match your standards.

The entities that Turbonomic discovers through your targets apply these policies until they are overridden by user-defined policies (described in the next section).

To view the default automation policies:

1. Navigate to Settings > Policies and then click the Automation policies tab.

2. Click the filter icon and then set the filter to Source = Defaults.

The page displays the following policies:

• A list of default policies for different entity types, such as Application Component Defaults, Database Defaults, Virtual Machine Defaults, and so on. For a list of supported entity types, see the 'Entity types that support automation policies' section in this topic.

  You can sort the policies alphabetically for ease of use.

• The global default policy (Global Defaults) that applies to all entity types for any scope of your environment

To view or change the settings for a policy, hover over a policy and then click the pencil icon that displays. Be aware that changes to the settings for the default policies apply globally. If you made changes by mistake, use the reset option in the policy page to restore the settings that shipped with the product.

User-defined automation policies

Create user-defined automation policies for workloads that require different rules. These policies override the default automation policies.

The following list describes use cases for creating automation policies.

• Turbonomic uses several settings to guide its analysis of the entities in your environment. The default settings might be adequate in most cases, but you might want different analysis for some groups of entities.

• Assume that you want to automate the execution of actions in your environment. It is common to take a cautious approach by automating action execution only on entities that are not in production. You can scope an automation policy to those entities and then set the action acceptance mode to Automatic.

• If actions for certain entities require approval, you can scope an automation policy to those entities and then configure an automation workflow that complies with your approval strategy.

You can assign a schedule to these policies to set up maintenance windows or other scheduled actions in your environment.

To create an automation policy:

1. Navigate to Settings > Policies and then click the Automation policies tab.

2. Click Create and then choose an entity type that applies the policy.

3. Configure policy settings and then save the policy.

General settings for automation policies

The default and user-defined automation policies include the following general settings.

• Name: A meaningful name for the policy. Each policy requires a name.

• Scope: Entities that apply the policy. User-defined policies require a scope. Default policies do not have a scope, which means they apply to all entities.

  You can choose one or more groups, or create new groups and add them to the policy scope. These groups match the type of entity that you set for the policy.

  In Turbonomic you can find nested groups (groups of groups). For example, the By PM Cluster group contains host clusters, and each host cluster is a group. Do not set the policy scope to a parent of nested groups. When setting up policies, be sure that you set them to individual groups. If necessary, create a custom group for the settings you want to apply.

  Note:

  A single entity can be a member of multiple groups. This can result in a conflict of settings, where the same entity can have different policy settings. For conflicts among user-defined policy settings, the most conservative setting will take effect. For details, see Prioritization of automation policies.

• Policy schedule: A schedule for enforcing the policy. A schedule is optional for user-defined policies. Default policies do not have a schedule.

  For use cases and information about how schedules affect policies, see Automation policy schedules.

  You can attach a schedule to a policy by selecting from a list of existing schedules. If no existing schedule is suitable or if none currently exists, you can create one as you are configuring the policy. For details, see Managing calendar schedules.

• Constraints: Action, operational, utilization, or scaling constraints that you can configure to adjust the analysis that Turbonomic performs. The settings that you can configure vary by entity type.

  For example, you can set different levels of overprovisioning for host or VM resources. Turbonomic considers these constraints when recommending the most optimal actions for the host or VMs.

• Automation workflow: Settings that control the automation of different action types within the same policy. For example, for a group of VMs in a policy, you can automate all resize actions, but require suspend actions to go through an approval process through an orchestrator. For more information, see Automation workflow.

Entity types that support automation policies

Turbonomic ships default automation policies for the following entity types. You can override these default policies with user-defined policies.

Prioritization of automation policies

The default and user-defined automation policies take effect in relation to each other. A default policy has a global effect, while a user-defined policy overrides the default policy for the entities within the indicated scope. Keep the following points in mind as you work on these policies:

• User-defined policies override a subset of settings.

  A user-defined policy can override a subset of settings for the entity type. For the remainder, Turbonomic will use the default policy settings on the indicated scope.

• When an entity applies conflicting user-defined policies, Turbonomic applies the following tie breakers:

  • A scheduled policy always takes precedence over a non-scheduled policy, even if the non-scheduled policy is more conservative.

  • Among scheduled policies with identical schedules, the most conservative setting wins.

  • Among non-scheduled policies, the most conservative setting wins.

  For example, a VM currently belongs to four groups with different policy settings.

  • Group A policy: Resize VM in Manual mode every Saturday.

  • Group B policy: Resize VM in Automatic mode every Saturday.

  • Group C policy: Resize VM in Manual mode (no schedule).

  • Group D policy: Resize VM in Recommend mode (no schedule).

  Results:

  • On a Saturday, Groups A and B policies take precedence over Groups C and D policies. The VM ultimately applies the Group A setting because it is more conservative.

  • On all the other days, only Groups C and D policies are active. The VM applies the Group D setting because it is more conservative.

• User-defined policies always take precedence over default policies.

  Even if the default policy has a more conservative setting, the setting in the user-defined policy wins for entities in that scope.

• For a global effect, always use default policies.