CIM7 Group Creation

[Sean_114]

How can I create groups for servers in CIM7. I have over 800 server, in CIM5.5 it was very easy to split them into groups such as Denver, Orlando, etc.

It would make it much easier to look at the servers per location like in CIM 5.5

[Jadrice Toussaint · Accepted solution]

Go to Devices -> device -> All.

Under Public Queries, create a new category called Production Servers/devices. Then create a query called "Denver Servers"
IN the Inclusion section, select Device by name. In the query description, clickingo n name will bring up a window. In that window select all servers that are part of denver. Do this for each group that you would like to create. See the attached screenshot.

[David Claypool]

Compaq Insight Manager (Win32) had a feature that allowed you to create folders for groups of servers and drag and drop servers into the various folders and it was frequently used to group servers by location. This was cool because the folder was associated with a status that represented the worst case status of any member of that group (e.g. all of the servers in Denver were green, the Denver folder would be green; 1 server in Orlando goes minor and the Orlando folder would change to yellow to represent that).

The contents of these folders were created manually by dragging and dropping and a server could appear in only one folder exclusively. In other words, a new server is deployed in Orlando and the operator would have to add it manually to the Orlando folder. You also could not have an additional set of folders called out by function, say like Exchange that contains all of the Exchange servers regardless of location.

IM7 uses database queries to identify groups of systems. These queries can be based on any selectable item in the database. Many are pre-created like "Critical Servers," "Windows 2000" and etc. You can create many more based on any criteria available to you, including individually naming the servers in your set. For example, your query for "Orlando" could be built to identify servers that you knew were in the Orlando subnet, such as 10.10.10.1 through 10.10.10.50. Any time a new server appeared in that range it would be included in that set. You also could have the "Orlando" query consist of servers named OSERVER1, OSERVER2 and OSERVER3. If OSERVER4 gets deployed, you would have to open the query and add that name to the query.

Recently (in 6.2 I believe) the agents implemented a free-form field called "Server Role" (find it at settings --> SNMP configuration --> Management Agents) that can be used creatively to identify systems based on arbitrary criteria. Take 3 locations, Denver, Orlando and Toronto, along with 4 general functionalities, SQL, Exchange, IIS and Infrastructure (firewalls, DNS, etc). Use these 2 criteria in the Server Role field for all of your various server locations and functionalities:

Denver SQL
Denver Exchange
Denver Infrastructure
Orlando IIS
Orlando Exchange
Orlando Infrastructure
Toronto Infrastructure

Then you could have queries based on a criteria such as "Server Role contains 'Orlando'" which would find all the Orlando servers or "Server Role contains 'Infrastructure'" which would group all of the Infrastructure servers.

Any time a new server is deployed, if its location and function are put into the "Server Role" field in the agent, IM7 will automatically include it in the proper query.

Finally, IM7 SP2 and later feature something called "My Favorites" that duplicates the function of folders by aggregating status into the status of the favorite. You simply add a query into a favorite, and the status will bubble up to the top. You can have multiple nested categories and servers can appear in multiple categories if they belong to more than one set.

For example, a favorite called "Location" could have the queries "Orlando," "Denver" and "Toronto" added to it. Location's status will reflect the overall status of all of the systems in the O, D and T queries. Expanding the sub-tree under location would show you individually the O, D and T aggregate status. If one of them had a device reflecting a non-green status, it would show that status. Clicking on the query would run a list for you of all of the systems that were members of the set so you could identify the individual server with a problem.

This functionality appears in the new HP Systems Insight Manager as well, although 'queries' are now called 'custom lists.'