User guide

8-2 ExtremeWare EPICenter Software Installation and User Guide
The Grouping Manager
Grouping Manager, through the EPICenter discovery capability and the Inventory and
VLAN applets. User and Host resources are defined within the Grouping module, either
by importing the information from an external source (such as an LDAP directory, NT
Domain Controller, NIS server, or a file) or by creating the resources within the grouping
module. A group can also be considered a “resource” when it is used as an entity in the
same way as an individual resource would be used—such as in a Policy definition within
the ExtremeWare EPICenter Policy Manager, an optional, separately-licensed product.
With the exception of Device Groups and Port Groups,the group and resource definitions
you create through the Grouping applet are primarily useful within the Policy Manager.
Formore information on how groupsareusedwithinthatapplication, see the ExtremeWare
EPICenter Policy Manager Software User Guide.
Youcandefinegroupsandaddresourcestothemtocreatean organizationalstructure that
facilitates managing your network. The EPICenter software provides several predefined
groups:
• Device Groups
• Hosts
• Import Sources
• Port Groups
• Users
You can define yourowngroupsatthesamehierarchicallevelas thepredefined groups,or
as subordinate groups (children) of an existing group. You can assign resources to your
own user-defined groups and to the predefined groups, with the exception of Device
Groups and Import Sources.
Three of the predefined groups—Hosts, Port Groups, and Users—initially have no
members. Although these groups are provided to help you organize your host, user, and
port resources, they can contain children of any resource type. You can create new groups
as members of these groups, or add resources of any type directly to them.
• Port Groups may be used by the Real Time Statistics applet and the IP/MAC Address
Finderapplet.However, these applets donotsupporthierarchicalgroups—if youhave
subordinate groups within a port group, the subordinate layers are all collapsed into a
single layer. Resources of types other than ports are ignored by these applets.
Port Groups, along with all the other types of groups and resources, may also be used
by the optional Policy Manager module.