Operation Manual

368 Copyright © Acronis International GmbH, 2002-2015
15.4.2.1 Machine groups
Machine groups are designed for convenient protection of a large number of machines registered on
the management server. While creating a centralized backup plan, select a group and the plan will be
deployed to all machines of this group. Once a new machine appears in a group, the centralized
backup plan is deployed to the machine. If a machine is removed from a group, the centralized
backup plan will be removed from the machine. A single machine can be a member of more than one
group.
Built-in group
As soon as a machine is registered on the management server, the machine appears in the All
machines with agents built-in group. This group always exists on a management server and cannot
be edited or deleted. The built-in group cannot contain any nested groups.
To protect all the registered machines at once, create a centralized backup plan select the All
machines with agents group. Protecting all machines with a single backup 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 backup plans applicable to different sets of machines. In
this case, consider creating custom groups.
Custom groups
Custom groups are created by the management server administrator. Creating custom groups helps
the administrator to organize data protection by company departments, by Active Directory
organizational units, by various populations of users, by the site locations and so forth.
A custom group can contain one or more nested groups. Any custom group can be edited or deleted.
The administrator can create the following custom groups:
 Static groups
The static groups contain the machines manually added by the administrator. The static group
content never changes unless the administrator explicitly adds or deletes a machine.
Example: You create custom group for the accounting department and manually add the
accountants' machines to this group. Once you create the centralized backup plan for 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
The dynamic groups contain the machines added automatically according to the criteria specified
by the administrator. The dynamic group content changes automatically. A machine remains in
the group until it meets the specified criteria.
Example: The accounting department forms a separate Active Directory organizational unit (OU).
You simply specify the accounting OU as the group membership criterion and create the
centralized backup plan for it. If a new accountant is hired, the new machine will be added to the
group as soon as it is added to the OU, and thus will be protected automatically.
Tip. To make the best use of the AD OU criterion, consider reproducing the Active Directory
hierarchy in the management server.
For more information about operations with groups and machines, see the following sections:
 Actions on groups (p. 375)
 Actions on machines (p. 369)