Device Groups

Device Group Hierarchy

The device group hierarchy appears on the left. First level device groups appear in alphabetical order under the parent All Device Groups. All devices are automatically added to the All Device Groups device group.

The Topology device group is unique. You cannot manage the Topology device group, the subordinate device groups, or membership of the devices in the Topology device groups.

• When you enable topology sources on the Cluster Manager > Cluster Settings tab, devices that topology discovers are automatically grouped in the Topology device group.

• Devices for which you enable the VMware plugin are automatically grouped under the Topology device group.

• If you use the OpenStack xStats adapter, all OpenStack devices are automatically grouped under the Topology device group.

Perform the following steps to manage the device group hierarchy. Check boxes enable you to simultaneously manage the metadata values, drag and drop, and delete multiple device groups.

1. Select the device group under which to add a new device group.

2. Click Add Device Group to display the Add Device Group pop-up.

   1. In the Device Group Name field, enter the device group name.

   2. Click Save on the pop-up.

3. - Click to edit the values for the metadata attributes you want to associate with the device group. See the Manage Metadata Values section below.

4. - Click to edit a device group name.

5. Drag and drop device groups to different places in the hierarchy.

   If a Device Group is moved from one parent to another, the permissions found in the User Role Manager for that device group are changed to inherit the permissions from the new parent.

6. - Click to delete a device group. When you delete a device group that has associated policies, a message appears to inform you that associated policies will be deleted.

   1. On the message, click View Policies to display the Policy Association pop-up that lists the policies associated to the device group.

   2. Click Done to move the policies.

Device Group Membership Rules

The standard way to control device group membership is through rules. Membership rules enable you to automatically add devices to the device group. A device group can contain one or multiple rules that are used to identify devices to be associated with the group. The group contains all devices that are a match for at least one rule in the group. You could think of the rules in one group as being joined by a logical OR statement. You will need to apply newly added or edited rules manually. To do so, click the Apply Rules button after adding/editing rules. Otherwise, the group rules will not be applied and any previous members will remain valid. Whenever a device is discovered or re-discovered, the rules for the groups are applied for it and it is added to the correct groups. Those rules might simply be saved and not applied to the group itself.

A device is member of a device group when it matches at least one rule from this group and its a member of its parent group. This means that the device should be a match for at least one rule in this and all ancestor groups. When rules are applied at the parent group, the rules for all child groups are also re-applied. This could cause devices to be removed from or added to the child groups based on the new parent restrictions.

Click on a device group in the hierarchy to display the device group membership rules and the list of devices that are members of the device group on the right. Rules are case-sensitive, and you can use Perl regular expressions to create rules. For details, please refer to section Perl Regular Expressions in SevOne NMS System Administration Guide.

1. Click Add Rule or to display the Add/Edit Device Group Membership Rule pop-up. Each rule requires only one field. If you populate several fields per rule the criteria you enter in the row are cumulative.

   Example

   Enter Remote in the Name field and enter ^192\.168 in the Mgt IP field in the same rule criteria row. The device must have both Remote in the name AND an IP address that starts with 192.168 to be added to the device group.

   

   • Device Name - The device name (wildcards are implied).

   • Device Description - The device description.

   • Management IP Address - The IP address of the device (^192\.168 adds all devices whose IP address starts with 192.168).

   • sysDescr - The text you get when you SNMP walk the sysDescr OID. For details, please refer to section SNMP Walk in SevOne NMS System Administration Guide.

   • sysContact – The text you get when you SNMP walk the sysContact OID.

   • sysLocation - The text you get when you SNMP walk the sysLocation OID.

   • sysName – The text you get when you SNMP walk the sysName OID.

   • sysObjectID - The text you get when you SNMP walk the sysObjectID OID.

   • Metadata Namespace - Allows you to choose the metadata namespace from the drop-down. Once the namespace is selected, Metadata Attribute field becomes available. Choose the metadata attribute from the drop-down. Upon selecting the Metadata Attribute, Metadata Value field becomes available. Enter a value in the Metadata Value field.

     The standard quantifiers in regular expressions (regex) are greedy, meaning they match as much as they can, only giving back as necessary to match the remainder of the regex. By using a lazy quantifier, the expression tries the minimal match first. You are advised to use lazy quantifier.

2. Click Save to save the rule criteria.

3. Repeat these steps to add additional rules to use the OR Boolean.

   Example

   Enter Remote in the Name field in the first row in the rule table then click Create Rule. Enter ^192\.168 in the second row in the rule table. The device can have either Remote in the name OR an IP address that starts with 192.168 to be added to the device group.

4. Click Apply Rules to add the devices that meet the rule criteria to the device group.

Device Group Membership

The Membership section displays the devices that are members of the device group. When you pin a device to a device group, rules do not affect the device membership. You must manually unpin a pinned device to remove its membership. When a rule adds a device to a device group, if you change the rule, the devices that were added by the rule can automatically be removed from the device group.

When a device is pinned to a child group, SevOne NMS checks to see whether this device is pinned to the parent group. A device might be a member of the parent group due to matching rules; however, pinning it to the child would still require it to be pinned to the parent. If it is not pinned to the parent, SevOne NMS will try to automatically pin it to the full hierarchy. If the user does not have permissions to alter the parent group, the entire action will be rejected.

When a device is unpinned from the parent group, it is also removed from all children groups. On the other hand, when a device is unpinned from the child group, the parent group devices are not affected in any way.

• - Indicates the device is a member that was pinned to the device group at this level.

• - Indicates the device is a member that was added by a device group membership rule at this level.