How to: Evaluate a Policy-Based Management Policy

This topic shows you how to use the Evaluate Policies dialog box to check whether a server instance, database, server object, or database object complies with a policy, or when you want to configure a database instance or database object to comply with a policy. When you want to check policy compliance on a regular basis, you can schedule policies.

To evaluate a policy from an object

  1. In Object Explorer, right-click a server instance, a database, or a database object, point to Policies, and then click Evaluate.

  2. The Evaluate Policies dialog box only shows policies appropriate for the database object. In the Evaluate Policies dialog box, select one or more policies, and then click Evaluate to run the policy in evaluation mode. This generates a compliance report for the target set but does not reconfigure SQL Server or enforce future compliance. For targets that do not comply with the selected policies and have properties that can be reconfigured by Policy-Based Management, you can enforce policy compliance by clicking Apply.

    Note

    The execution mode is defined as part of the policy and cannot be changed in the Evaluate Policies dialog box.

To evaluate a policy from a policy

  1. In Object Explorer, expand Management, expand Policy Management, expand Policies, right-click a policy, and then click Evaluate.

  2. In the Evaluate Results page, you see the results of the policy evaluation. For targets that do not comply with the policy and have properties that can be reconfigured by Policy-Based Management, you can enforce compliance by clicking Apply.

To evaluate a policy on a schedule

  1. In Object Explorer, expand Management, expand Policy Management, expand Policies, right-click a policy, and then click Properties.

  2. On the OpenPolicy, General page, in the Evaluation Mode area, select On schedule.

  3. In the Schedule box, click Pick to specify an existing schedule, or click New to create a new schedule.

Security

Requires membership in the PolicyAdministratorRole role in the msdb database.