Setting up groups for monitoring

A group is a collection of monitored resources that you define. To make information easier to find and manage, you can create groups that correspond to real-world relationships (such as by city, a specific department, or the type of resource, etc.). There is no limit on the number of groups you can define. You can select individual devices, monitors, and other groups (child groups) and combine them into a single unit (group) for management purposes.

Groups in Operations Management are of two types:

• Groups created manually using the Create Group option
• Groups synchronized from Infrastructure Management that are created using the Infrastructure Management administrator console or using a Central Monitoring Administration monitoring policy.

You can view the groups in Operations Management in the Configuration > Groups page.

Manually created groups are of two types: static groups and rule-based groups.

This topic presents the following sections:

Static groups

Static groups are groups that are created by manually adding existing devices or monitor instances. You have to manually pick and add a device or monitor instance to form a static group. For information about creating a static group, see Creating, editing, and deleting static groups.

Rule-based groups

You can create rule-based groups that automatically update content based on a given rule. A rule is a combination of a pattern match on a device or monitor name, and on a condition (Equals, Contains, Starts with, Ends with).

For example, an organization has offices in three different locations—Chicago, Perth, and Copenhagen—and the devices have names based on the location of each office. If devices in Perth have names starting with "PERTH," you can create a group that consists of only those devices that belong to the Perth office. Using rule-based groups, you can create a rule with the name pattern match *PERTH** on devices. All devices that match *PERTH** are consolidated in one rule-based group. When new devices are added or existing devices are removed from the Perth office, they are automatically added or removed from the rule-based group.

For information about creating a static group, see Creating, editing, and deleting rule-based groups.

Viewing groups

To view all the groups in Operations Management:

1. Go to Configuration > Groups.The Group Configuration page displays all the groups that are present in Operations Management.
   The Manual Groups tab displays all the groups that are manually created in Operations Management. The Synchronized Groups tab displays the groups that have been synchronized from Infrastructure Management. You can add or update only manual groups.

   Note

   On the Manual Groups tab, static groups are indicated by regular font and rule-based groups are indicated by italicized font.
2. You can add a group by clicking the icon next to Group Configuration.

3. Click a group name to view details of that group. When you click a group name, the following details of the group are displayed:

   Detail	Description
   Description	Description specified when the group was created
   Type	A group can be of two types: static and rule-based.
   Parent Groups	Parent groups that the group belongs to
   Child Groups	Child groups to which the group is a parent of
   Assigned devices	Devices that are a part of the group. These devices are added to the group when it is being created.
   Assigned Monitor Instances	Monitor instances that are a part of the group. These monitor instances are added to the group when it is being created.

   You can edit the group by clicking the icon next to the group name. For more details see Creating, editing, and deleting static groups and Creating, editing, and deleting rule-based groups.

Best practices for groups

Avoid creating a single group with hundreds or thousands of devices. Not only does this reduce the usefulness of the group, it can also hamper the performance of probable cause analysis if the group is used as a filter. When creating a group that encompasses a large number of devices, it is best to create it from smaller groups that have real meaning in terms of function, dependency, or topological relationships. For example, if you are grouping devices according to network topology, BMC recommends a maximum of 254, the number of addresses in a length-24 class-C subnet.

Related topics

Monitoring groups

Administering