Device groups are a fundamental organizing tool in NetMRI. You use device groups to gather devices with similar attributes and similar categories together, to perform device management tasks, or because you want to organize a set of devices into a group to perform specific processing tasks, or to prevent processing tasks from being performed.
NetMRI ships with pre-defined device groups. Discovered devices are grouped based on their types and assurance levels. For more information, see Default Device Groups.
All device groups are divided into two types:
- Basic device groups that provide only basic categorization and processing features to limit processing loads on member devices. They are most useful for large collections of network devices that you know will not be actively managed, such as end-user network segments at the terminating end of Ethernet circuits.
- Extended device groups, which provide the full set of NetMRI device processing features on member devices. They provide network scores for the NetMRI Dashboard and enable management through user Roles and Privileges. Extended device groups also may impose a higher computation load on the appliance.
For more information, see Controlling NetMRI with Device Groups.