## Managing Nodes by Groups

Servers (also referred as nodes) registered in Parallels Business Automation can be united into groups for better management. Such grouping provides an additional way to assign nodes for services provisioning (per hosting plan) and allocate IP addresses. IP addresses allocation is associated with nodes groups by assigning an IP pool to a nodes group, in the same way as an IP pool can be allocated to a type of hosting. In addition, you can group nodes by location (datacenters, etc.).

Nodes are grouped by types. Only nodes of the same type can be included in a group. It is possible to create as many nodes groups as needed. First you create a group and then add (remove) nodes into (from) it.

To add a nodes group:

1. Open the Service Director submenu, expand the Manager folder that corresponds to type of nodes you want to group (Plesk, Virtuozzo, Servers). Select Node Groups.
2. Click New Node Group. Fill the form:
   1. Type a group name into the Name field. This is the name the group will be referred to when associating with hosting plan or IP pool.
   2. Type a short description of the group into the Description field.
   3. Enter a free-form comment into the Comment field.
3. Click Save.

As a group is created, you can add or remove nodes, or remove this group. Removing a group cancels nodes logical grouping.

To add node to group:

1. Click on a group name.
2. Switch to the Nodes tab.
3. Click Add Nodes. The list of all the nodes that belong to the type you have selected appears on the screen.
4. Select the nodes you want to add by checking the box next to nodes' names.
5. Click Add Nodes.

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