Designing and Managing Behavior Models - Behavior Models and Their Components - NerveCenter Objects - Property Groups and Properties -
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Property Groups and Properties

Another attribute of a node -- one that requires a little explanation -- is the node's property group. A property group is a list of properties, which are strings that generally name either an object in the management information base (MIB) used to manage a node, or the role the node plays in the network (such as "router"). These property strings can be:

• The name of a MIB base object
• A user-defined string

  Property Groups and Properties

  

Property groups are assigned to nodes and control which nodes will be contacted by a particular poll and which nodes can be monitored using a particular alarm. Both types of properties -- MIB base objects and user-defined strings -- play a part in making these determinations.

For example, NerveCenter ships with a predefined property group called Router. This property group contains the properties shown in the following table.

Properties in Router Property Group

In this case, all the properties are MIB objects except "router," which describes the type of the device.

For the person who programs NerveCenter to monitor particular devices for specific error conditions, the properties associated with each node are important. These properties allow the programmer to define which devices NerveCenter should poll for MIB data and which error conditions NerveCenter should look for on each device, among other things.

You can filter the nodes that you are monitoring based on their properties. For example, you might choose to monitor only nodes that have been assigned the Router property group, that is, all routers.