Understanding and Creating Directives

Directives are used to either extract values from elements managed within a service, or to retrieve values from managed servers using the CA Configuration Automation Agent. The following list introduces the four directive types:

Verification directives—Eliminate initially discovered components that are partially installed, of the wrong version, or not of interest to a particular service.
Parameter directives—Define parameters that are critical for locating and identifying the component, such as the file system or registry root, component version, vendor, and database connection information.
Executable directives—Define directives to extract and interpret configuration information from a server.
Macro step directives—Help diagnose problems specific to the servers containing the data being managed by its Component Blueprint and provide additional information about a server or service, such as viewing system information, memory statistics, or disk volume statistics.

The sections that follow describe the directives in detail.