PBM Evaluation Modes

PBM has four evaluation modes that provide us with flexibility in the way we evaluate policies against our SQL instances.  Here are the options and what we can use them for:

• On Demand – This is a manual policy evaluation.  Policies in this mode can only be evaluated by performing a policy evaluation in SSMS.
• On Schedule – This allows you to automate the evaluation of policies.  Policies in this mode require a schedule and are executed via SQL Agent jobs.
• On Change: Log Only – This mode only evaluates a policy in response to a SQL Server DDL Event.  The action performed by the user is allowed to complete and the result is logged in PBM.
• On Change: Prevent – This mode only evaluates a policy in response to a SQL Server DDL Event.  The action performed by the user is wrapped in a transaction and automatically rolled back if it violates the policy.