Grouping The Registered Machines; Static And Dynamic Groups; Dynamic Grouping Criteria; Using Custom Groups - ACRONIS Backup & Recovery 10 Advanced Server User Manual

Advanced product editions other than Virtual Edition (Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Advanced
Server, Advanced Server SBS Edition and Advanced Workstation) allow using only the last of the
above methods.

2.13.3 Grouping the registered machines

As soon as a machine is registered (p. 371) on the management server, the machine appears in the
All machines built-in group (p. 363). By applying a backup policy to this group, you protect all the
registered machines. The thing is that a single policy 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 - twice a year; so you may want to create various policies applicable to
different sets of machines. In this case consider creating custom groups.
2.13.3.1

Static and dynamic groups

You can explicitly specify which machines the custom group has to include, for example, let's say,
select each of the accountants' machines. Once you apply the accounting department policy to 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. Such groups are called static (p. 371) since their content
never changes unless the administrator explicitly adds or deletes a machine.
Manual operation is not required though, if the accounting department forms a separate Active
Directory organization unit. You specify the accounting OU as the group membership criterion. 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. Such groups are called dynamic (p. 367) since their
content changes automatically.
2.13.3.2

Dynamic grouping criteria

Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Management Server offers the following dynamic membership
criteria:

Operating system (OS)

Active Directory organization unit (OU)

IP address range.
Multiple criteria can be specified for a dynamic group. For example, a set of criteria "OS equals
Windows 2000, OS equals Windows 2003, OU equals Accounting" is interpreted as "all machines
running Windows 2000 or Windows 2003 and belonging to the Accounting organizational unit".
The All machines group can be thought of as a dynamic group with the single built-in criterion:
include all the registered machines.
2.13.3.3

Using custom groups

Grouping 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 the like. To
make the best use of the AD OU criterion, consider reproducing the Active Directory hierarchy in the
management server. Grouping by the IP address range enables taking account of the network
topology.
The groups you create can be nested. The management server is capable of maintaining up to 500
groups in total. A machine can be a member of more than one group.
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