Template overrides and instance-level configuration

When jobs are deployed using templates, it is important to understand the difference between deploying a job and enforcing its configuration.

A job template can be used in two different ways:

- To ensure that a job is installed on an instance

- To ensure that both the job and specific parameter values are enforced on an instance

This behavior is controlled by whether the job in the template has override parameters defined.

Jobs with override parameters

If a job in a template has override parameters configured, those parameter values are treated as authoritative.

During template deployment (typically executed by internal jobs, often at night), dbWatch Control Center will reapply the override values from the template to all instances using that template.
Any instance-level changes made to those same parameters may therefore be overwritten during deployment.

Example:
A template contains the job Database backup (SIMPLE) with an override exclude pattern set to dbWatch%.
If a database (for example AMBER1) is manually excluded on a specific instance, the change will work initially, but after the next template deployment the exclude pattern may revert back to the template value.

Jobs without override parameters

If a job is included in a template without override parameters, the template only enforces that the job is installed on the instance.

In this case, instance-level parameter values are preserved, and local configuration changes will not be overwritten by template deployment.

This explains why some jobs can be customized per instance while others revert — it depends on whether the template defines override parameters for that job.

Recommended approaches for instance-specific configuration

If a job parameter must differ for one or a limited number of instances:

Create a separate template (or a copy of an existing template) with different override values and assign only the relevant instances to that template

Remove override parameters from the template if instance-level configuration should be allowed for all instances

Exclude the instance from template management if the template must enforce overrides globally