Excluding non-reporting endpoints

You can define a non-reporting threshold to exclude endpoints that are unresponsive from the target list of your Automation Plans. For example, you might set a non-reporting threshold of one hour, and if some endpoints have been unresponsive for one hour before the point at which the first step in the plan is being processed, these endpoints are excluded from the target list. The exclude non-reporting feature differs from the timeout feature in that non-reporting endpoints are automatically excluded from the target list if they have been unresponsive before system begins processing actions. With timeout, endpoints are targeted and the action is deployed to the endpoints, but the action times out after the timeout period you configured elapses.

About this task

To streamline how your Automation Plans are processed, you can exclude endpoints that have been unresponsive for a period of time from the list of targets endpoints. You do this by setting a non-reporting threshold. To use this feature, you must first configure a global value for the non-reporting threshold using Task 156 Configure the Automation Plan Engine. For information about how to configure the non-reporting threshold, see Configuring the Automation Plan Engine. Then for each individual plan, choose whether you want unresponsive endpoints to be excluded as targets.

Note the following behavior of exclude non-reporting endpoints feature:
  • The non-reporting feature applies to targets for regular steps and failure steps, if a failure step is configured.
  • Targets excluded from the targets list for a step can subsequently report back and thus be included as valid targets for subsequent steps in the plan.
  • If an endpoint has been unresponsive but subsequently reports back as a subsequent step in the plan is being processed, the failure behavior options control if the targets that were excluded from the earlier step are included or excluded in later steps in the plan. If you want to exclude targets that were unresponsive from subsequent steps in the plan, enable the Exclude from Future Steps failure behavior option because the unresponsive targets are treated the same way as failures. For more information about failure behavior, see Defining step failure behavior settings.
  • If all target endpoints are unresponsive, the plan is stopped automatically.
  • To view the list of endpoints that were unresponsive and excluded from the plan, check the engine log file. For Windows, the Automation Plan Engine log file, pe_console.log, is located in the <BES Server Root Directory>\Applications\Logs subdirectory of the installation directory, for example, C:\Program Files (x86)\BigFix Enterprise\BES Server\Applications\Logs. For Linux, the pe_console.log file is located in the /var/opt/BESServer/Applications/Logs directory.

Procedure

  1. If necessary, activate analysis 150 Configure the Automation Plan Engine Analysis.
  2. Open Server Automation Task 156 Configure the Automation Plan Engine.
  3. In the Non-Reporting Time Threshold section, enter a value for the non-reporting threshold. Enter a value in the form HH:MM, where HH are hours and MM are minutes. If you do not specify a value for the non-reporting threshold in Task 156 Configure the Automation Plan Engine, the default value of 9,999 hours and 59 minutes is used.
  4. Click Take Action and run the Task.
  5. When the Task runs successfully, you can exclude non-reporting endpoints from processing for each individual plan, as follows:
    1. Open an Automation Plan for which you want to exclude non-reporting endpoints.
    2. From the Settings tab, check the Exclude non-reporting endpoints option.
    3. Save the plan.
  6. Run the plan.