What And Where Is Maintenance Mode?

On the surface, the terms “Maintenance“, “Maintenance Schedule“, “Maintenance Mode“, and “Suspend Servers or Devices” seem to mean the same thing

However there are important differences

This article explains where and how these features are used within the Argent Advanced Technology products and the possible effects they have on reporting

Question:

What is a Maintenance Schedule?

Answer:

A Maintenance Schedule is a way to skip the normal execution of Relators for one or more servers or devices across one or more Argent products

For example, if you have a regular maintenance window on Saturday mornings, you can have Argent stop monitoring those servers or devices during that time period

Maintenance Schedules can be Routine Scheduled (those that happen on a regular basis) or Special Scheduled (those that are one-time, ad hoc events, that do not reoccur)

Question:

Where do I define a Maintenance Schedule?

Answer:

The Maintenance Schedule for a server or device is defined within License Manager, on the actual Maintenance Schedule screen (G1)

This is accessed via the Properties screen (G1B) for any given device or server

Click the Administration icon and then go to License Manager
In Licensed Servers/Device view double-click the node you wish to administer

Click For Full Size
Expand the Maintenance list from the G1B screen and click button on the right

Click For Full Size
This will open Maintenance Schedule Definition

If you select more than one server and choose Properties, the G1B screen will change as shown below:

Click For Full Size

This allows you to set Maintenance Schedules for multiple servers or devices, rather than setting them one at a time

Question:

OK, but wait

When I go to answer an event in the Argent Console, I see an option that says “Set Alert Status On Console To ‘Maintenance’” for a certain number of minutes

What’s that mean?

Answer:

The option you’re referring to allows you to postpone further escalation of an event for a specified period of time

Let’s say you got an alert that says disk space is low on a server

The event is configured to escalate to other personnel within your group after 15 minutes

You’re already on the case, and figure you don’t need to bug them right now

If you check the box and set the event to Maintenance for 30 minutes, it’s like hitting the snooze button on your alarm clock

The escalation will be suspended for the 30-minute period (or whatever you define)

Of course, if you resolve the issue before that time and/or answer the event yourself, the escalation won’t be fired anyway

This option only affects a single event that has already occurred

Click For Full Size

If you want, you can always go back and put the event into Maintenance again, much like hitting the snooze button again

You can even do that before the initial Maintenance period expires

Question:

OK, but what about the Suspend Servers or Devices feature?

Answer:

This feature is accessed via a right click popup menu for any server or device that is displayed on the Applications tab of the Argent Console

An example is show below:

Click For Full Size

When you suspend a server or device, events are still posted to the Argent Console, but alerts are not fired

This can be useful for suspending the normal alerting process for a server or device during testing

The Relators still run, and any Argent Predictor data you normally collect will still be saved

So you can see the impact of a test without alerting personnel unnecessarily

Question:

What effect does a Maintenance Schedule under Licensed Servers have on my server up/down time reporting?

Answer:

Placing a server into a maintenance schedule under Licensed Servers means that no alerting or monitoring will take place, therefore no Argent Predictor data will be collected

This can potentially skew your reporting for server up/down

There is a registry key that can be set so that placing servers into a maintenance schedule will not have any effect on those reports