Patent ID: 8212683

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for monitoring a metric of a system, the method comprising: receiving, in a monitoring tool and from an agent of the monitoring tool, an operation metric that corresponds to a present characteristic of a monitored system among multiple systems, the monitoring tool receiving the operation metric as one of multiple metric inputs that the monitoring tool is configured to receive from agents; receiving, in the monitoring tool and from a downtime planning component for the multiple systems, a planned downtime metric that reflects whether the monitored system is currently in a planned downtime, the planned downtime metric received as another one of the multiple metric inputs; combining the operation metric and the planned downtime metric into a processed operation metric for the monitored system; and evaluating the processed operation metric with regard to at least one alert rule in the monitoring tool, the alert rule configured to generate an alert to a user of the monitoring tool based on a specific condition relating to the present characteristic.