Adding and Configuring Host Groups
You can create groups of virtual machine hosts, known as host groups, to easily monitor and manage hosts and virtual machines. You can use host groups to organize hosts in whatever manner makes sense for your environment. For more information about ways that you can use host groups, see the "Planning for Host Groups" topic (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=103633).
If you use the virtual machine self-service feature of VMM, host groups enable you to control the virtual machine self-service environment by adding and configuring self-service policies. A self-service policy is a property of a host group and grants a user or group permissions to create, operate, manage, store, create checkpoints for, and connect to their own virtual machines through the VMM Self-Service Portal. For more information about self-service, see the "About Virtual Machine Self-Service" topic in VMM Help (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=98644).
Host groups are hierarchical, so you can create host groups within a host group, known as child host groups. Child host groups inherit host reserve settings and self-service policies from their parent host group. For more information about the inheritance of host reserves and self-service policies, see the "Planning for Host Groups" topic (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=103633).
You can create a child host group within an existing host group:
- For general host group management purposes.
- To override host reserves inherited from a parent host group.
- To amend or add to the virtual machine permissions of self-service policies inherited from a parent host group.
You can create host groups by using the New host group action in Hosts view or Virtual Machines view. For step-by-step instructions for creating a new host group, see the "How to Create a Host Group" topic in VMM Help (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=103314).
You can configure a host group by modifying its properties to:
Add or remove hosts.
Note
You can also use a drag-and-drop operation to move selected hosts to a host group.
Move the host group to a parent host group.
Note
You can also use a drag-and-drop operation to move selected host groups to another host group.
Set aside system resources, known as host reserves, for use by the host operating system of the hosts in the host group. You can specify how much CPU, memory, disk space, disk I/O capacity, and network capacity is reserved for the host.
Create self-service policies to allow virtual machine self-service on hosts and virtual machines in the host group.
For more information about configuring host groups, see the "How to Modify the Properties of a Host Group" topic in VMM Help (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=103622).