Creating a group based on rules from the administrator console

Rule-based groups are dynamic groups created by specifying rules. 

You can use a regular expression to apply a rule to a group. Infrastructure Management uses a regular expression as pattern match on groups, devices, instance names, and tags. The name pattern match can be applied to only one group, device, or monitor instance.

A tag pattern match is applied to the tag string. You also can specify a selected list of monitor types or you can choose to add all instances irrespective of the monitor type filter.

This topic provides guidelines and a procedure that you can use to create dynamic groups from the administrator console.To create a dynamic group from the TrueSight console, see Setting up groups for monitoring.

Pattern matching on an entity name

• If your entity is a group and the name regular experssion pattern matches a group name, Infrastructure Management considers all instances for that group. 
• If your entity is a device and the name regular experssion pattern matches a device name, Infrastructure Management considers all instances for that device. 
• If your entity is a monitor instance and the name regular experssion pattern matches an instance name, Infrastructure Management considers all instances with names that match that pattern.

Pattern matching on a tag

• You can tag entities with meaningful information such as location, owner, department, and so on. 
• If your entity is a group and the tag regular experssion pattern matches a group tag, Infrastructure Management considers all the instances in that group. 
• If the chosen entity is device and the tag regular experssion pattern matches a device tag, Infrastructure Management considers all instances associated to that device. 
• If your entity is a monitor instance and the tag regular experssion pattern matches an instance name, Infrastructure Management considers all instances with tags that match that pattern.

Filtering by monitor type

• All instances that result from the above pattern match are then checked for the monitor-type filter. 
• If you choose a set of monitor types, Infrastructure Management considers only those instances whose monitor type matches the selected types and discards the rest. Every instance has a monitor type. 
  
  If you do not specify a monitor type, Infrastructure Management considers all of the instances.

To create a new group by specifying rules

1. From the Administration Console, select the Group folder, right-click and select Add Group.
2. In the Add Group dialog box in the Group Name field, specify a name (maximum length of 60 characters; no spaces) for the new group.
3. In the Group Description field, specify a description for the group.
4. Select Group made by specifying rules. 
5. Click Next. The Select Group window is displayed.
6. Select the Group Name, Device Name, or Monitor Instance Name.
7. Specify the Pattern Match. Instances which belong to a matching group name, device name, or monitor instance name are automatically included as the members of this group. Pattern matching supports all Java Regular Expression pattern matches.
8. Select the monitor types that need to be associated to the group. Select All to include all monitor types, or select Selected to associate the selected monitor types.
9. Click Add or Remove to add or remove the selected monitor types. 
10. Click Show Members to display the list of monitor types that match the pattern.
11. Click Finish. The rule-based group is created and listed under the Group folder or click Close to return to the Administration Console without creating the group.

Related topic

Creating and managing groups in the administrator console