Administration Guide › Provisioning Resources › CA Software Delivery Provisioning › Understanding Packaging › Using Generic Groups and Templates

Using Generic Groups and Templates

When you discover or provision a new system, your next step is likely to involve deployment of software packages, monitoring certain metrics, and applying rules. These operations are typically performed individually for each system. The process is as follows:

• Deploy each software package one at a time. Know exactly which packages to deploy and the order of installation of each package.
• Go to the Metrics page and select the metrics you want to monitor. Know exactly which metrics to select.
• Manually define the exact rules, statements, and actions you want to apply to the server. Know how to create rules, how and which statements to create, and which action to take.

This process can be inefficient, especially if you are configuring multiple systems. CA Server Automation provides a generic way to group software packages in one group. Using these groups, you can apply them to a server or service at once. Additionally, you can link the different entities together to form a template so that the same software delivery packages can be applied to other systems.

When grouping software packages together, be sure to create the package groups using software packages for the same operating system. Package groups do not support the capability to deploy packages for different operating system types in one package group. For example, create one package group to deploy to Windows XP, another package group to deploy to Linux, and so on.

Note: For information about creating generic groups and templates, see the Online Help.