Eventing › Monitoring Metrics with Event Rules › Add Rules to a Custom Device Collection

Add Rules to a Custom Device Collection

Networks and systems are constantly changing. Device collections are automatically updated to include devices as they are discovered. However, it can be difficult to keep custom device collections up-to-date. Therefore, you can use rules to populate the custom device collections. Newly discovered devices that meet rule specifications are added to device collections. Similarly, if they do not meet rule requirements or they are no longer monitored, devices are removed.

Group rules can be added to groups to populate and update a group contents automatically, based on various conditions. In this case, you want to add group rules to the Virtual Servers custom device collection to keep it up-to-date with discovered virtual servers. For this scenario, we assume that the IP addresses of the virtual machines are within a given range.

Follow these steps:

1. Select Admin, Custom Settings, and click Groups from the CA Performance Center main menu.

   The Manage Groups dialog opens.

2. Select the group that you want to populate in the Groups tree.

   Note: Devices that are added directly to a group as a manual step appear as Direct Items in the Group Properties pane. Components that are added to a group because they are children of a managed device are Inherited Items in the Group Properties.

3. Click the Rules tab, and then click Add Rule.

   The Add Rule dialog opens.

4. Supply a name for the rule in the Rule Name field.
5. Select Devices from the Add list.
6. Click Add Condition.

   A row of drop-down lists and fields appears.

7. Do the following actions:
   • Select Device Address from the first list.
   • Select 'is between' as the method for matching from the second list.
   • Enter FROM start IP address TO end IP address in the third list to indicate the range where the IP addresses of the virtual machines can be found.
8. Click Preview Results to confirm that the new rule is including the devices that you want.

   The results are shown in the Group Rules Preview window. You can expand each device type to see the specific devices that are added.

9. Click Save or click Save and Run Rules:
   • Save - Saves the rules without running the rules. The group is populated during the next global synchronization, which occurs approximately every 5 minutes.
   • Save and Run Rules - Saves the rules and populates the group immediately.