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Virtual Endpoint Groups

To enable you to easily apply policy, agent action, and agent settings rules to groups of endpoints, you can define virtual groups from the ESM Console. Virtual groups enable you to group endpoints based on static characteristics such as hostname or unique ID; or dynamic characteristics such as a full or partial domain or workgroup, or an IP address, range, or subnet. You can also add existing groups to a static virtual group to create a nested virtual group of endpoints.
In addition to using virtual groups in policy, you can also search agent logs in the ESM Console by virtual group.
To create a new virtual group:
  1. Select SettingsAgentVirtual Groups.
    For each virtual group you define, the ESM Console displays the unique ID, Modification Date, Name and Description, group membership Type (Dynamic or Static), and a listing of the number of workstations, servers, and groups the virtual group Contains.
  2. Click the action menu
    and then Add a new group.
  3. Select the Virtual Group type and specify the membership characteristics:
    • Static—Membership based on existing endpoints (by hostname) or nested endpoint groups (static or dynamic).
    • Dynamic—Membership based on endpoint characteristics—such as domain, IPv4 or IPv6 address, range, or subnet.
      To specify a domain as a criteria for membership, enter a full or partial domain. The domain can optionally include the * wildcard to match any set of characters or the ? wildcard to match a single character.
  4. Enter a Name and Description to identify and describe the group.
  5. Define the membership criteria for the Virtual Group type you selected.
    For example:
    Static Group
    Dynamic Group
  6. Save your group.
  7. After you create your group, you can:
    • Use the virtual group to reduce the scope of a policy, agent settings, or agent action rule. To apply a policy to a virtual group specify the group name in the Existing Groups field on the Target Objects tab of the rule.
    • Add an endpoint to an existing virtual group. From the MonitorAgentHealth page, optionally use the filters to reduce the number of results. Then select the endpoints you want to add to the group and—from the actions menu—Add to an existing group.
    • View the agent health for endpoints belonging to a virtual group. On the MonitorAgentHealth page, use the Virtual Groups filter to display only endpoints that match the filter criteria.