Essential Microsoft Operations Manager

Creating a Custom Computer Group

As mentioned in Chapters 3 and 4, computer group definitions are included in management packs and instantiated in a management group when the management pack is imported. Computer groups that are created through this method have already been associated with rule groups. When the computer discovery process runs, the computer groups are populated with computers according to the filter criteria for that group. Rules are then sent to the agents on those computers and monitoring begins.

For his own purposes, Max, the Leaky Faucet MOM administrator, will create a custom computer group that is not associated with any rule groups, but exists only to identify the computers that the remote office administrators will work with in the Operator console.

The following are the steps taken to create the custom group:

1. Name the group. In the Administrator console, navigate to the Computer Groups node, bring up the context menu, and create a new computer group. Proceed through the Welcome page to the name and description page. Max names the group LKF Remote Office Servers and puts in a description (Figure 6-3).

2. Add computers via explicit naming. Next, the computers explicitly wanted in this computer group are added (see Figure 6-4). Max is explicitly naming the servers because there is no criteria to calculate the group membership. For the sake of this example, homesqlserver and homesrv02 are selected.

   Figure 6-3. Name the custom computer group and describe its purpose ...