Device groups

Device groups are designed for convenient management of a large number of registered devices.

You can apply a protection plan to a group. Once a new device appears in the group, the device becomes protected by the plan. If a device is removed from the group, the device will no longer be protected by the plan. A plan that is applied to a group cannot be revoked from a member of the group, only from the group itself.

Only devices of the same type can be added to a group. For example, under Hyper-V you can create a group of Hyper-V virtual machines. Under Machines with agents, you can create a group of machines with installed agents. Under All devices, you cannot create a group.

A single device can be a member of more than one group.

Built-in groups

Once a device is registered, it appears in one of the built-in root groups on the Devices tab.

Root groups cannot be edited or deleted. You cannot apply plans to root groups.

Some of the root groups contain built-in sub-root groups. These groups cannot be edited or deleted. However, you can apply plans to sub-root built-in groups.

Custom groups

Protecting all devices in a built-in group with a single protection plan may not be satisfactory because of the different roles of the machines. The backed-up data is specific for each department; some data has to be backed up frequently, other data is backed up twice a year. Therefore, you may want to create various protection plans applicable to different sets of machines. In this case, consider creating custom groups.

A custom group can contain one or more nested groups. Any custom group can be edited or deleted. There are the following types of custom groups:

• Static groups

  Static groups contain the machines that were manually added to them. The static group content never changes unless you explicitly add or delete a machine.

  Example: You create a custom group for the accounting department and manually add the accountants' machines to this group. Once you apply a protection plan to the group, the accountants' machines become protected. If a new accountant is hired, you will have to add the new machine to the group manually.

• Dynamic groups

  Dynamic groups contain the machines added automatically according to the search criteria specified when creating a group. The dynamic group content changes automatically. A machine remains in the group while it meets the specified criteria.

  Example 1: The host names of the machines that belong to the accounting department contain the word "accounting". You specify the partial machine name as the group membership criterion and apply a protection plan to the group. If a new accountant is hired, the new machine will be added to the group as soon as it is registered, and thus will be protected automatically.

  Example 2: The accounting department forms a separate Active Directory organizational unit (OU). You specify the accounting OU as the group membership criterion and apply a protection plan to the group. If a new accountant is hired, the new machine will be added to the group as soon as it is registered and added to the OU (regardless of which comes first), and thus will be protected automatically.