Custom Groups are a powerful construct in vROps, most often used to group objects together for use within Dashboards, Reports, or Views. I use them all the time, with almost 400 of them in my lab today.
The use case I see most often is Custom Groups being used to loosely define applications as collections of VMs. As you can see, Custom Groups also have Group Types assigned to them. I think of these as folders or tags, allowing you to nicely organize your Custom Groups.
Let's create some Custom Groups of VMs, a Group Type to put them in, and some Dashboards using them. First, let's create a Group Type for them called Groups of VMs. Go to Environment - Custom Groups - GROUP TYPES - ADD.
There are several that come out of the box, namely Environment , Department, Function, etc. I'd like to create one that's a bit more descriptive, in my case.
Next let's create our Custom Groups of VMs, go to Environment - Custom Groups - ADD.
There are any different ways to great Custom Groups: using metrics, relationships, properties, names, tags, etc. In this case we will capture all VMs with a certain naming convention.
Here you can see I've created several Custom Groups of VMs, some of Group Type Environment some with Group Type Groups of VMs.
Now, let's use these to start a Dashboard. Two ways we can do this, one starting with the Object List Widget, another using the View widget.
This Dashboard starts with an Object List Widget top left listing the Custom Groups. Output Filter is pointed at Object Types - Groups of VMs.
Now, if you want to start with a View Widget, we might end up with something like this.
Remember, when using the View Widget as a Self Provider, you need Input Data, in this case you want all Groups of VMs Object Types. In order to get them, you'll need a container holding them. In our case we'll use a Group of Groups.
I've created Group of Groups v3 of Object Type Function to contain all Group of VMs Object Types. I tagged it as Object Type Function as it's not a list of VMs.
I'm sure there are other ways to do this as well, but these are the first two that come to mind, enjoy!
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