Setting Up and Managing Host Groups > Methods of Organizing Hosts
  
Version 10.0.01
Methods of Organizing Hosts
Hosts are owned, used, and managed by business groups. These can be backup servers or clients running specific operating systems and applications, and they are located in specific geographical locations. Host groups provide a way to logically represent these different relationships.
Examples of common groupings:
By backup server, connecting hosts to the backup servers that back up their user data. This is the most common method of organizing backup servers/clients.
By backup policy, specifying which policy determines the specifics of the backup.
By business unit, reflecting your company’s organizational structure.
By host type, in the event that one system administrator manages Windows servers and another manages Linux servers. You can also use host type to distinguish between production systems and test systems.
By geographical location, to accommodate different reporting requirements depending on the country in which your company does business.
To organize hosts into host groups
1. Create a host group. See Creating Host Groups and Sub‑Groups.
2. Assign hosts to a group. See Managing Host Group Members.
You are linking a host to a host group to define a relationship with that group. Data collection populates the database with the hosts/servers it finds. In certain circumstances, such as configuring a master server in a backup collection policy, you will need to add a new host to the reporting database.