HP StorageWorks Fabric Manager 5.x Administrator Guide (AA-RUQSF-TE, September 2005)

64 Discovering and customizing fabrics
• Create groups of switch model types or firmware versions to expedite firmware downloads.
• Activate licenses on all group members simultaneously.
• Group switches by function to monitor switches that belong to different departments or that serve as a
backbone to the SAN.
• Group switches by physical location to monitor fabrics in disparate locations.
• Group switches by SAN island to monitor or update individual islands.
• Group switches by redundancy so you can maintain one half of a fabric while the other half continues
to carry traffic.
• Nest fabrics to drill down to the source of a problem; for instance, if you create a switch group for a
campus and then nest within that switch groups for departments, you can move down the hierarchy to
determine the source of any status change.
• Create separate groups for monitoring and management to reduce unnecessary levels of nesting.
• Group ports by certain devices and hosts to more easily monitor those elements.
• Use groups to simplify the monitoring view of a large or complex fabric.
Consult the following sections for information about working with switch and port groups:
• Creating switch groups, next
• Editing a switch group, page 65
• Deleting a switch group, page 65
• Creating port groups, page 65
• Editing a port group, page 66
• Deleting a port group, page 66
Creating switch groups
To create a group of switches:
1. Select Configuration > Groups > Edit Switch Groups.
The Edit Switch Groups dialog box opens (see Figure 26).
Figure 26 Edit switch groups
2. Click the SwitchGroups icon in the right window.
The group that you create is displayed nested within the item that you click in this step. If you click an
existing group instead of the SwitchGroups icon, your new group appears as a subgroup of that group.
After you create a group, you can drag it to a new location in the hierarchy.
3. Click Create.
The Create Group dialog box opens.
4. Enter a name for your group in the Name field and click OK.
NOTE: A switch can be in multiple groups at the same time.