Managing hosts

The Hosts tab allows you to create host profiles of target computers (where your data resides). While creating the profile, you can also include details of the agent responsible for collecting the data. The Agent can be a Collection Station, a standalone Collection Agent, or the Collection Agent available for the BMC PATROL infrastructure. For more information, see Agent-types.

Advantages of creating hosts

Creating a host can have the following advantages:

Reuse of information: You can capture various inputs such as tags, group access permissions, and Agent details and then reuse this information while creating data collectors.
Automation: You can associate collection profiles with a host. By associating a collection profile (that includes data-collector templates), you can automatically create data collectors under Administration > Data Collectors and start data collection. At the time of associating collection profiles, you can also override macro values in that collection profile at run time. This change does not apply to the original collection profile listed under the Collection Profiles tab, instead it is only applied at run time for creating data collectors with the overridden macro values.
Managing Agents: You can use the Hosts tab as a tracking mechanism for managing Collection Stations and Collection Agents connected with the product.

Assigning a host while creating a data collector

While creating a data collector, you need to specify details about the target host where data resides and details of the Agent that you want to use for collecting the data. Instead of manually specifying these inputs, you can store these details by creating a host profile. Then while creating the data collector, you can directly select the host.

Depending on whether you want to perform a local or remote collection, you can assign a host in the following ways:

Local collection: Select a configured host from the Collection Host (Agent) list.
In this scenario, the Agent is expected to reside on the target host. Therefore, the target host and the collection host are expected to be the same.
Remote collection: Select a configured host from the Target Host list.
In this scenario, the Agent is expected to reside on a different host as compared to the target host. Therefore, the target host and collection host are not expected to be the same.

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:

The Hosts tab provides the following information:

Field	Description
Host	Name of the target host that you configured.
Agent Name	The name of the Collection Station or the Collection Agent provided while creating the host.
Redundancy Status	Indicates whether redundancy is enabled or not for the Collection Station installed on the host.
Version	The version of the Collection Station or Collection Agent used while creating the host.
Agent Status	Displays whether the Collection Station (or Collection Agent) is connected or not, as follows: The green square indicates that the Collection Station (or Collection Agent) is up and running. The red square indicates that the Collection Station (or Collection Agent) is down.
Host Tags	The tags assigned to the host.

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 data. You can also enter partial text, click Search , and select the appropriate host computers.
Instance Name	(Optional) When you enter (or select) a host name in the preceding field, this field is automatically populated with the same information. You can manually override this value to provide a custom name by which you might want to identify the host.
Agent Info
Agent Name	(Optional) Search for a Collection Host (Agent) by clicking Search Agents or manually enter the Collection Host (Agent) name. Note: If you specify a value in this field and create the host, then you cannot change this value while modifying the host.
Enable Agent	(Optional) Select (or clear) this check box to enable (or disable) data collection for the particular Collection Agent.
Collection Profiles
Collection Profiles	(Optional) Search for an existing collection profile and click Select Collection Profiles to add it to the list of collection profiles that you want to associate with the host. To override the values of macros associated with the collection profile, click Edit macros under the Actions column, specify new values next to the macro names and click Apply. To remove the collection profiles from the list of collection profiles that you want to associate with the host, click Remove Profiles under the Actions column. Notes: Collection Profiles can be applied only once. Changes made to the Collection Profile later are not applied to the data collectors created beforehand. The edit action is not supported if a particular collection profile did not contain macros.
Host Level Tags
Select Tag name and corresponding value	(Optional) Tags can be added while creating hosts and data collectors. However, if you assign tags while adding a host, then these tag details can be directly inherited while creating data collectors. You can inherit tags while creating data collectors by selecting the target host and then selecting the Inherit Host Level Tags From Target Host check box under the tags section. Tags can be added to categorize data collected, which can later be used to narrow down search results. Tags added or inherited while creating data collectors are displayed on the Search tab, under the Filters panel, and in the Tags section. Example: If your are collecting data from hosts located at Houston, you can select a tag name for "Location" and in the value specify "Houston". While searching the data, you can use the tag, Location="Houston" to filter data and see results associated with the Houston location. To be able to see tag names, you need to first add them by navigating to Administration > System settings. To specify tag names and corresponding values, in the left box select a tag name and then type the corresponding tag value in the right box. While you type the value, you might see type-ahead suggestions based on values specified in the past. If you want to use one of the suggestions, click the suggestion. Click Add to add the tag name and corresponding value to the list of added tags that follow. Click Remove Tag to remove a tag. Note: At a time, you can specify only one value for a tag name. To specify multiple values for the same tag name, each time you need to select the tag name, specify the corresponding value, and click Add. For more information about tags, see Understanding-fields.
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.You can use this setting to restrict user access to the data collected from this host. Before you enable this setting, you need to ensure that data access control is enabled at Administration > System Settings. While creating data collectors, you can inherit the permissions enabled by using this setting, by selecting the Inherit Host Level Access Groups From Target Host check box. Notes: If you do not select any user groups and data access control is not enabled, then all users can access data retrieved from the host. You can restrict access permissions by selecting the relevant user groups that must be given access permissions. To enable data access control, navigate to Administration > System Settings. If you do not select any user group and data access control is enabled, then only the data collector creator can access data retrieved from the host. But for this, the host must be associated with the data collector.

Other methods of creating hosts

In addition to using the UI, you can create host profiles in the following ways:

By using BMC PATROL for IT Data Analytics: You can create a host profile while configuring a Collection Agent by using BMC PATROL for IT Data Analytics. While creating a host profile, you can also specify the collection profile name that must be associated with the host. The collection profile need not exist at the time of the association. You can later create it (with the same name that you specified while configuring a host) under Administration > Collection Profiles. Note that the name should be the same as that specified while creating the host profile. For more information, see Setting-up-Collection-Agents.
By using a REST API: You can use REST APIs to create hosts, delete hosts, enable or disable agents, list host details, and to modify group permissions and tag details associated with a host. For more information, see Developing.

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.