Computer Groups

  • Article

Computer Groups enable computers with similar characteristics or attributes to be grouped together. A computer group might be designed to group all servers running Microsoft SQL Server 2000 as "Microsoft SQL Server 2000," or to group all server in the a particular region as "Northwest Region Servers".

In addition to grouping together computers with like characteristics or attributes, computer groups are used for following purposes:

  • Targeting and deploying rules.

  • Navigating within the Operator console.

In some cases, this computer group can be manually populated; however, in the interest of automating the process for operations personnel, Management Pack authors will almost always design computer groups to be automatically populated, based on the discovery of one or more computer attributes. This is especially true when a Management Pack is being designed to manage a specific application, such as Microsoft SQL Server 2000.

Computer Groups are highly configurable. The following things can be configured by using the Computer Groups creation wizard and property sheet:

  • Included Sub Groups

  • Included Computers

  • Excluded Computers

  • Scope of computer group Membership

  • Formula

  • State Roll-up Policy

  • Console Scopes

  • Parents

  • Rules

Each of these configurable options is discussed in the following sections.