Working with Policy-Based Management Facets

A Policy-Based Management facet is a set of logical properties that are related to an area of management interest. SQL Server includes several predefined facets. For example, the Surface Area Configuration facet defines, as properties, the features that are off by default.

When you manage many similar SQL Server environments, you can configure a facet in one instance of SQL Server, copy the state of the facet to a file, and then import that file into another instance of SQL Server as a policy. When the state has been converted to a policy, the policy can be applied to other instances of SQL Server, instance objects, databases, or database objects.

This topic describes how to copy the state of a facet to an XML file.