A custom group is a container that can hold any number of objects and any type of object.
Using custom groups, you can align infrastructure operations with business teams and priorities, such as:
- Lines of business
- Workload types
- Configuration types
Custom groups come from the following sources:
- Built into the product
- Installed management packs
- User-defined
Custom groups are found in the navigation pane on the Environment page, as shown in the following screenshot:
To create a new custom group, click the plus icon at the top of the Custom Groups tab.
Custom groups enable you to create your own containers for objects in your environment. The benefit of using custom groups is that you can customize the operational view of your infrastructure to meet specific business needs. For example, a common way to group objects is by application.
vRealize Operations includes a few built-in custom groups. For example, the Universe group is a vRealize Operations custom group that encompasses every object known to the vRealize Operations instance. The vSphere World group is a custom group that is included with VMware vSphere. vSphere World encompasses every vSphere object from every VMware vCenter Server instance that is managed by vRealize Operations.
In this example, the Organizational Business Unit (CGT USR) is a user-defined custom group. A custom group type is an identifier that you apply to a specific custom group in your environment to categorize your objects.
Custom group types come from the following sources:
- Built into the product
- Installed management packs
- User-defined
When you create a custom group, you assign an object group type to the new custom group. You can use an existing custom group type, or you can create your own custom group type. You apply a custom group type to groups of objects so that vRealize Operations can collect data from the custom group and display the results, for example, in the dashboards and views.
Each management pack that you add to vRealize Operations might add one or more static groups of objects to group the data received from the adapters, as shown in the following screenshot:
In this example, a user-defined custom group type, named Organizational Business Unit (CGT USR), has been created. The custom groups named All Accounting VMs (COG USR), All Development DBs (COG USR), All Development VMs (COG USR), and All Sales VMs (COG USR) have been assigned to this custom group type. These groups are used to group the following objects in the environment together:
- All Accounting VMs: All virtual machines that belong to the Accounting business unit
- All Development DBs: All virtual machines containing databases that belong to the Development business unit
- All Development VMs: All virtual machines that belong to the Development business unit
- All Sales VMs: All virtual machines that belong to the sales business unit