Managing hosts

The Hosts tab allows you to create host profiles of target computers (where your data resides) and the Collection Stations (that are responsible for collecting data). The Collection Station is the local collector that is automatically installed when you install the BMC TrueSight IT Data Analytics product. If you want to collect data remotely, you can configure a Collection Agent by using the BMC PATROL Knowledge Module for IT Data Analytics. For more information, see Configuring after installation.

Creating a host profile allows you to capture tags and group access permissions and then reuse this information while creating data collectors. You can also associate various collection profiles with a host. By associating a collection profile (a set of data-collector templates) with a host, you can automatically create data collectors under Administration > Data Collectors and start data collection.

The Hosts tab serves as a tracking mechanism for managing Collection Stations and Collection Agents connected with BMC TrueSight IT Data Analytics.

You can use the host profile while adding a data collector in the following two scenarios:

• Local collection: If you are configuring a data collector for local collection, then you can select a configured host from the Collection Host (Agent) list (where the Collection Station resides). In this scenario, the target host and the collection host are expected to be the same.
• Remote collection: If you are configuring a data collector for remote collection, then you can select a configured host from the Target Host list (where the Collection Agent resides). In this scenario, the target host and collection host are not expected to be the same.

This topic contains the following information:

Viewing and searching hosts

The Hosts tab allows you to manage hosts. To access this tab, navigate to Administration > Hosts. From here, you can perform the following actions:

Action	Icon	Description
Add Host		Add a new host. For detailed instructions on adding a host, see Adding hosts.
Edit Host		Edit the selected host.
View Host		View details of the selected host.
Delete Host		Delete the selected host.
Search		Search a host by entering the host name in the search bar available at the top-right side of your screen.

The Hosts tab provides the following information:

Adding hosts

To add a host, on the Administration > Hosts tab, click Add Host, provide the following information, and click Create.

Field	Description
Name	Enter the name of the target host from which you want to collect logs. You can also enter partial text, click Search , and select the appropriate host computers.
Instance Name	When you enter (or select) a host name in the preceding field, this field is automatically populated with the same information. You can customize this value.
Agent Info
Agent Name	When you enter (or select) the host name in the Name field, this field is automatically populated with the same information. You can also search for a Collection Host (Agent) by clicking Search Agents and selecting the appropriate Agent name. Note In most cases, the host name and Agent name are the same. However, if you have two Agents on the same host, then you can search for that Agent you want to use and select it.
Collection Profiles	(Optional) Search for an existing collection profile and click Select Collection Profiles to add it.
Host Level Tags
Select Tag name	(Optional) Manually add tags by selecting one of the tags in the list, specifying a corresponding value, and clicking Add . The list of added tags are displayed in the Tags panel on the Search tab. To remove a tag, click Remove Tag under the Actions column.
Host Level Group Access
Select All Groups	(Optional) Select this option if you want to select all user groups available. You can also manually select multiple user groups.

Where to go from here

Create data collectors so that data can be collected and brought into the system. For more information, see Managing data collectors.

If you want to create a data collector that needs a customized data-pattern type, first create the data-pattern. For more information, see Managing data patterns.

Related topics

Managing content packs

Integrating