Administer > NNMi State Polling > Plan State Polling > Planning Groups > Node Groups

Node Groups

After planning interface groups, plan node groups. Not all node groups created for monitoring make sense for filtering views, so you can configure them independently.

Preconfigured node groups

provides a default collection of node groups to simplify your configuration tasks. These are based on device categories derived from the system object ID during the Discovery process. The node groups provided by default include:

  • Routers
  • Networking Infrastructure Devices (such as switches or routers.)
  • Microsoft Windows Systems
  • Devices for which you do not have the SNMP community string
  • Important Nodes. This is used internally by the Causal Engine to provide special handling for devices in the “shadow” of a connector failure. For more information, see Node Groups As Predefined View Filters in the NNMi help.
  • Virtual Machines

Over time might add more default groups to simplify your configuration tasks. You can use existing groups, modify them, or create your own.

You can qualify the definition of related nodes using the following node attributes:

  • IP address(es) on the node
  • Hostname wildcard convention
  • Device Profile derivatives such as category, vendor, and family
  • MIB II sysName, sysContact, sysLocation

Tip You can create simple, reusable, atomic groups and combine them into hierarchical clusters for monitoring or visualization. Group definitions can overlap, such as “All Routers” and “All systems with IP address ending in .100.” Nodes will probably qualify for multiple groups as well.

Find a balance by creating a rich set of groups for configuration and viewing without overloading the list with superfluous entries that will never be used.

Interaction with Device Profiles

When each device is discovered, NNMi uses its system object ID to index into the list of available Device Profiles. The Device Profile is used to derive additional attributes of the device, such as vendor, product family, and device category.

As you configure node groups, you can use these derived attributes to categorize devices to apply monitoring settings. For example, you might want to poll all switches regardless of vendor throughout your network on a certain polling interval. You can use the derived device category, Switch, as the defining characteristic of your node group. All discovered devices whose system object ID maps to the category, Switches, will receive the configured settings for the node group.

Tip If NNMi is managing a hypervisor network environment, you might want to create a Node Group that contains only Virtual Machines (VMs). These nodes are identified using the vmwareVM device profile. You can also use this Node Group to occasionally check for VMs that are no longer hosted on a hypervisor. After selecting this Node Group, filter by Hosted On = null to identify these VMs. You can also use this Node Group to enable fault polling for the IP addresses associated with your VMs, which is also a best practice to ensure your VMs continue to be monitored even when its associated hypervisor has been deleted.

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