You use maintenance mode to apply a special status to a monitored object to stop errors and alerts occurring when you are performing maintenance tasks on that object. For example, you want to restart a server to apply software updates or shut it down temporarily to change the hardware configuration. Prior to performing these maintenance tasks, you would use the Operations Manager console to place the server into maintenance mode so that the server restarting or going offline does not trigger a host of alerts and notifications. Enabling maintenance mode suspends the following features:
- Rules and monitors
- Notifications
- Automatic responses
- State changes
- New alerts
To put a computer into maintenance mode, perform the following steps:
1. In the Operations Manager console, click the Windows Computers node under the Monitoring node. This node is shown with the computer SYD-DC.tailspintoys.internal selected in Figure 1.
FIGURE 1 Windows Computers node
2. With the computer that you want to put into maintenance mode selected, click Start Maintenance mode on the Tasks menu.
3. In the Maintenance Mode Settings dialog box, shown in Figure 2, configure the following settings:
- Apply To You can select between the selected object, and the selected object and all contained object.
- Category You can use this to specify the reason for the object being put into maintenance mode. You can select whether the maintenance mode is planned, and can specify one of the following reasons:
- Other (Planned/Unplanned)
- Hardware: Maintenance (Planned/Unplanned)
- Hardware: Installation (Planned/Unplanned)
- Operating System: Reconfiguration (Planned/Unplanned)
- Application: Maintenance (Planned/Unplanned)
- Application: Installation (Planned/Unplanned)
- Security Issue
- Duration You can specify the number of minutes, or a specific end time for the maintenance mode status.
FIGURE 2 Maintenance Mode Settings
4. Once in maintenance mode, a maintenance mode icon, like the one shown in Figure 3, will appear next to the computer until the maintenance period expires.
FIGURE 3 Maintenance mode icon
You can edit maintenance mode, for example to increase the amount of time that the maintenance period lasts, by right-clicking the object, and clicking Maintenance Mode, and then clicking Edit Maintenance Mode settings. This will return you to the Maintenance Mode Settings dialog box that you can use to change the maintenance mode settings.
You can stop maintenance mode on a computer by clicking the computer in the Windows Computers node of the Monitoring workspace, and clicking Stop Maintenance Mode. You will then be prompted to confirm that you want to stop maintenance mode, as shown in Figure 4.
FIGURE 4 Maintenance Mode
